Apple recently announced a public beta of Boot Camp, a utility that will allow users to install Windows XP on a Mac computer. The final version of the utility won’t be available until Apple’s next OS release, code-named Leopard, but already it is making waves among Mac enthusiasts and PC users alike. With the recent switch to Intel-based hardware Apple is finally giving users a choice of operating system.
It’s easy to install Boot Camp on an existing Mac machine, it comes with a number of utilities and all of the drivers required to support Windows XP on the Mac platform. Many industry analysts have declared Boot Camp a “win-win” situation for both Apple and Microsoft. While a large part of Apple’s earnings come from sales of peripheral hardware and music downloads (such as the iPod and iTunes), at its heart Apple is still a hardware vendor and needs to sell computers to survive.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is pleased to push its own operating system and infiltrate the last segment of the market it hasn’t been able to capture. (Not to mention finally generating some revenue from all of die-hard Mac fans that have been untouchable in the past.)
In the short term there is not much that Apple can do to loosen Microsoft’s hold on the operating-system market, but I am sure Microsoft will watch things closely to see if there is any lost ground.
Apple recently started an aggressive advertising campaign in the US, spending big money to point out that the Mac is a much more stable and reliable platform than Windows. And with rumors of even more delays in the next version of Windows (Vista), consumers may look at alternatives. But the majority of software applications on the market are Windows-based and that is a huge factor when deciding on which computer to buy.
With that said, the introduction of Boot Camp does give Apple the opportunity to make up for lost ground. Research firm IDC notes that in 2005 Apple had 3.3 percent market share in terms of computer sales. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but in comparison Toshiba captured only 3.2 percent of the market share in the same period.
Apple has made in-roads to making its low-end computers affordable, and given that the majority of end-users are already comfortable with Windows, you should see Apple’s consumer computer sales increase dramatically in coming years.
For corporate sales, Apple has a long way to go—organisations that are “Mac-friendly” will welcome the opportunity to use Windows and the wealth of software created for the Windows platform, but for just about everyone else it is going to be a tough sell. According to industry analysts at Gartner, Apple’s market share peaked in the early ’80s at around 15 percent and hasn’t returned to that level since. Key components of Apple’s demise were the lack of applications for the platform and Apple’s reluctance to open up the operating system to other hardware platforms. And that lack of enterprise application support is still hurting the company today.
Even with Boot Camp, it is a feeling of “too little, too late” in the enterprise arena. IT managers looking at purchasing or replacing desktop PCs will need a compelling reason to switch to the Mac platform and for the majority of organisations, it is just not there. And in the hyper-competitive hardware market, Apple does have a number of desktop machines suitable for the enterprise that are competitively priced, but larger manufacturers such as Dell and HP can afford to lower their margins on corporate deals and deliver more hardware for the money.
In short, Boot Camp is a great little utility that offers real choice to consumers who would normally not consider buying a Mac. As such, Apple will see an increase in consumer sales but the enterprise market is going to be tougher for them to crack.
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