Filed under: Apple Financial, Holidays, iPod touch
Apple looking pretty good at Amazon
For many online and brick and mortar stores, it has not been a great holiday season. Even with all the after-Christmas sales today, retailers are saying they do not expect to be able to make up for the effects of a dismal economy.
For Amazon, however, things went very well. Today Amazon reported that this has been their best season so far, shipping an amazing 72.9 items per second. Amazon has not reported profits, so with deep discounting they may not have made as much money as last year, even though they have sold more items.
In the electronics category, where computers and MP3 players sit, the Apple iPod touch was a best seller. Of the 25 best selling notebook computers, 7 were Apple laptops when I checked. (These numbers change hourly.) Only one other laptop that sells for more than 500 dollars made the top 25, a Toshiba for $599. The rest of the top sellers were all under $500 and included several netbooks. Are you listening, Apple? Netbooks are catching on. What is so interesting is that Apple users did not seem to be very sensitive to price, and the best selling Apple notebook was not the cheapest, but was in fact the new unibody MacBook.
For desktop computer sales, 3 of the 5 best sellers are Macs, but note these numbers change hourly too. Dell and HP round out the top 5. While not authoritative, Apple seems to weathering some of the economic recession. When Apple releases holiday benchmarks for their retail and online store, the results should be interesting.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Daniel Massicotte said 4:42PM on 12-26-2008
I'm thinking customers are entering in to "reading mode" these days with the recession, since they say that this is the time to learn.
That would explain Amazon's success. I wonder how the brick&mortar book stores fared out this Christmas.
Reply
Perspective said 4:48PM on 12-26-2008
The logic in this post is basically zero. The author mentions the success of "netbooks" in the same post that you point out that Apple buyers aren't terribly price sensitive. Basically, the "point" I gather is that even though Apple could continue selling Macbooks at $1000+ a piece (along with iPhones at $200-300), they should nonetheless introduce a netbook that would cannibalize both. Brilliant idea!
Dell needs to build netbooks. HP may need them as well (though probably not yet). As of today (based on this post), Apple does not.
Reply
buddy said 4:54PM on 12-26-2008
I'm with Perspective here.
"Are you listening, Apple? " WTF. You just said Apple has 7 in the top 25 notebooks.
John B. said 5:58PM on 12-26-2008
Seriously... If it takes a sub-500 dollar laptop to compete with Apple's offerings, where's the problem for them? I think Apple is and has been listening (gleefully at that).
Bryan Jones said 5:16PM on 12-26-2008
"Are you listening, Apple? Netbooks are catching on. "
Netbooks are four key things: (1) Junk. (2) A Fad. (3) Miserable to use. (4) Not made by Apple.
This is why it's so important that when Steve Jobs leaves, he hand-picks his successor. We can't have the person running Apple thinking, "Wow, everyone else is doing X. We should do X too!"
So no, Mel, Apple isn't listening. And that's a very good thing, because this article doesn't say anything smart.
Reply
Odineye said 8:23PM on 12-26-2008
This netbook thing keeps coming up, and I think it misses the point. Apple already has a series of small portables in the sub-$500 price range that allow for Internet browsing and e-mail. Folks can (and undoubtedly will) grouse about the virtual keyboard, but most of what people seem to be wanting netbooks for is already covered by the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Reply
m0kum said 6:59PM on 12-26-2008
hell, what kind of amazon logo you have used in this article?
Reply
danny said 8:31PM on 12-26-2008
PS has mel ever written a good article, if so pls reply with a link
:D
Reply
Simon Arch said 12:47AM on 12-27-2008
I thought you weren't going to read TUAW anymore because you find the content so personally offensive.
Andy said 8:33PM on 12-26-2008
Another point of contention: Amazon didn't release any profit information (that I'm aware of) in today's press release. It's great that they're selling lots of stuff, but if they aren't getting good margin, how can you say things are looking up? I'd be interested in finding out the numbers before calling it a success.
Reply
Ted said 9:21PM on 12-26-2008
In my opinion Apple is playing it smart to sit on the side lines with netbooks for now. There's not much evidence to suggest netbooks are replacing traditional desktop/laptops -- they are supplementing them as second (third, fourth?) computers. I think Apple is very happy if you buy a 24" iMac for home and a $300 no-margin netbook for the road. The only market where they might be replacing desktops/laptops is with extremely price sensitive customers who were never Apple buyers anyway. No loss there either.
It terms of desktop vs. laptop sales I think there's a growing trend of "stay at home" laptops replacing desktops and being supplemented with netbooks or smart phones for mobile use outside the home. If that trend continues I think the iPhone fills the gap nicely. There's no real need for an Apple netbook yet. The technology just isn't there to produce a cheap innovative netbook and there's no incentive for Apple to fight in a market with razor thin margins when they already offer a higher margin product (iPhone) that serves basically the same purpose.
Reply
Terry said 10:48PM on 12-26-2008
Great, iPod Touch is more and more popular in the electronics devices.
If Mac users need convert DVD movie, or video clips and HD video from cameras to iPod Touch, you can use the Total Media Converter for Mac.
http://www.aimersoft-mac.com/total-media-converter-mac.html
Hope it helps every guys. Merry Christmas.
Reply
Don said 11:54PM on 12-26-2008
Or they could use iSquint or MPEG Streamclip for free.
Andrew said 11:14PM on 12-26-2008
"Are you listening, Apple? Netbooks are catching on. "
That's like saying "Are you listening, BMW? Hyundais are catching on." Apple's target customers are different than ASUS and Acer just as BMW's target market is different than Hyundai. Both their products do similar things at a high level, but one is much, much nicer.
Reply
Paul said 6:41AM on 12-27-2008
"Are you listening, Apple? Netbooks are catching on. "
I hope they are! top four notebook computers were netbooks, two Apples in to top 10 rest were netbooks.
The market is shifting, big time, I work in education and netbooks are big news. I am a lifelong Apple user/fanboy and l find myself recommending Lenovo S10 netbooks, Apple has no product that comes near in cost/portability terms.
I was amused by Andrews comment, "BMW? Hyundais are catching on." my thought would be "GM?, compact cars are catching on". We all know what happens to car companies who ignore market trends.
Anyway I find myself increasingly using a netbook (running Mac OS of course) instead of my Macbook, its well built, bright LED lit screen, 160gb hd, 2mb ram, N wifi, memory card slot, real external monitor port, 3 USB ports, web camera and as 4/5 hour battery life, it cost a fraction of a Macbook Air.
Like all fanboys I would prefer to be using (and recommending) a real Apple, lets hope new week brings a netbook announcement.
Reply
Tony said 3:44PM on 12-27-2008
I also work in education, and over the summer we did a 250 unit purchase of new laptops for our teachers. We had 7 or 8 different models available as demo units and about 30 teachers gave them a try then rated each one. There was a sub-note in the lineup, and it came in dead last in the rankings. The comments were pretty much the same across the board "screen is way too small...no way I could do my work on that..." Now, ours is not a traditional school. Our teachers are in the field, not the classroom, and everything they do is on the computer...from an online student information system to spreadsheets and pdf forms. (BTW, the Macbook won...)
OlsonBW said 11:02AM on 12-28-2008
Here's the problem with a Mac netbook.
The iTouch with it's small screen costs from $299 (8 gb) to $399 (32 gb) and the lowest end MacBook costs $999 for the previous generation and $1299 for the lowest cost current generation. Exactly what could you build for between that which wouldn't cause people to buy it and not a MacBook?
I'd love to have an iTouch/iPhone with more RAM and a screen that is 250% larger where you still don't have a keyboard. I mean EXACTLY like an iTouch/iPhone but 250% larger. How much would they have to charge for it though? $799???
Truth is I would buy one of those but keep in mind a few things. How much RAM do you think it would have? It would have to be less than the AIR has or people would buy it instead. So I'm thinking not more than 64gbs. But even then, if you weren't typing all day and were just surfing and doing things you would do on an iTouch/iPhone then I still think they would have quite a few people buy this new device over the AIR and Apple would lose about $1,000 in profit, which is more than this $799 device would cost in total.
With that big of a screen and the virtual keyboard, I could see myself getting used to typing on that with two hands. It would be big enough for that. Barely but big enough. So you wouldn't need a separate keyboard for it. See what I'm saying? People would buy that instead of the MacBook or AIR and Apple would lose lots of profits.
And that's with only 64 gb of RAM with no way to upgrade it. Meaning you would NOT be able to plug in an external hard drive or anything you can't plug into a iTouch/iPhone. It would still cannibalize the MacBook and AIR. So you will never see it even though I would love to see one.
So what do you have to price something like this at? It would have to be at least $1099 which would mean buying this or spending just $200 more to buy a full latest generation MacBook, which I would then opt for because it has lots more storage and you can plug stuff into it. It would still be EXTREMELY irritating that it doesn't have FireWire on the MacBook but I couldn't see myself buying this super iTouch/iPhone when the MacBook is "just a little more".
So ... what do you build and with what specs without stopping people from buying the MacBook or AIR. I don't see a product that Apple could build that wouldn't hurt their profits.
Note: I was ready to buy a new MacBook until I found out it didn't have a FireWire port on it making it so I can't plugin my video camera to it. And I can't afford a new MacBook AND a new video camera to start with. Not to mention that daisy chaining multiple USB hard drives kills performance compared to FireWire. Why multiple hard drives? One TimeMachine drive, one drive for home/family videos (since they won't fit on the MacBook hard drive which is too small to start with but can't be made bigger because of the MacBook Pros ...) and I could go on from there.
Reply
Bob Thedino said 6:08PM on 12-28-2008
Anyone else notice how the Mac mini appears twice in the top 25? Clearly people are still buying in spite of the media reports of it being dead, unpopular, unsuccessful, etc. Looking forward to the new Mac mini on Jan 6th!
Reply