Apple is either in danger of “becoming the next Atari” or is in its best position ever. Those are two opinions industry experts offer in a US News article that looks at Apple’s future.
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Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group thinks that the end is near, mainly due to a nearly 20 percent falloff in Apple’s school sales. “They’re losing enough market share to become another Atari, to cease to be viable,” he told US News. See our Sept. 6 article for details on Apple’s declining education sales.
On the other hand, Stephen Baker, information technology research director at NPD Intelect says that, “Apple has never been better positioned to be more relevant in the PC business than right now,” Consumers’ “sated PC appetites” mean CEO Steve Jobs’s push to make Macs the hub of a digital lifestyle is a viable strategy, he told US News. Columnist Charles Haddad of Business Week Online recently voiced the same opinion.
Though Apple’s “flat and puny 4 percent market share makes it no threat to industry leaders,” there are lots of positive signs, according to US News. Among them: Mac OS X 10.2 (“Jaguar”) is selling in record numbers and sales of the iPod could reach US$650 million next year. And Apple, along with Dell, is one of the few computer makers actually making money right now.