What are the Sales Statistics for the Apple Macbook Air?
Apple has recently been riding a wave of success when it comes to sales. Ignited by their iPod years ago, Apple has since released successful product after successful product. Everything from their Macbook, Macbook Pro, to their iPhone, iPod Touch and iPod nano has seen tremendous sales growth to the point where Apple is dominating the smartphone market (in the United States anyway) and the MP3 player market. Of course they could still in no way be said to be dominating the laptop or desktop PC market, nevertheless, their share has been steadily increasing over the past few years. This growth in the PC market is led by the Macbook and Macbook Pro apple laptops . But what about another prominent model recently hyped up at the Mac World Expo by none other than Steve Jobs himself, namely, the Apple Macbook Air?
The Macbook Air device has been made popular with claims of it being the thinnest laptop in existence and a popular marketing campaign. After all, who hasn’t seen the commercial where the Macbook Air is pulled out of the envelope. However, the question on the minds of many industry experts is how well the Apple MacBook Air is selling. And the answer is not that well, or at least not at all on par with the recently introduced Macbook Pro. There are many reasons for this, ranging from cosmetic, the simultaneous release of the Macbook Pro, to the many features the Macbook Air had to sacrifice in order to achieve its remarkable thinness. For instance, some consumers are upset over "having" to purchase the macbook air superdrive in order to make full use of the laptop. So did Apple overestimate the market and misjudge themselves in making this wonder, or do some trends simply take awhile to catch on? Asus actually managed to start a revolution with their extremely compact, bare bones, and inexpensive Eee PC, so what is Apple doing wrong and can we expect more success on the horizon?
The notion of smaller is better at any cost functioned perfectly for Apple’s iPod series. The iPod nano was a major hit and everyone was amazed at how small and portable the music player had become, so why isn’t this the same case with laptops? For one, many Apple Laptops have already reached a very compact and lightweight size, so that they are easily portable in a laptop bag or rucksack. Obviously, it would be even more convenient to have a pocket sized full value laptop, but the technology has not quite reached this level unfortunately.
Small size and practically is much less sought after in laptops than in music players, which many people take with them while jogging or commuting. As a result, the market demand for minimizing a laptop was much smaller and users were not willing to carry the burdens and sacrifices involved in achieving the smaller design. While it is acceptable to sacrifice performance and memory capacity for the iPod nano, for example, doing so with the Apple Macbook Air makes less sense when full value alternatives are only marginally larger and heavier.
Maybe the killer was the lack of the optical drive inside the Macbook Air. While Apple claims to easily solve this lack with the Apple MacBook Air Superdrive external USB drive, for many users this is too much extra hassle. Moreover, plugging in the external superdrive uses the Macbook Air’s only USB port, which seriously limits the user’s options. While making things simpler is often a blessing, here many users have found it a curse. Finally, Apple’s Macbook Pro has seen quite a lot of success, and many buyers when presented with the alternative, opt for the Macbook Pro. So the Macbook Air’s sales figures have yet to hit the roof, but if someone can find an ideal use or reason for having such a thin laptop, then we can expect the sales statistics to climb.
