Accolade for Apple – Powerbooks, and ibooks power company to Readers’ Choice award

This year it seems the entire world is taking a bite out of Apple, after the ubiquitous computer company returns to the number one spot, winning the 2004 Readers’ Choice Awards for the brand with the most global impact. Despite releasing search engine innovations such as Google maps, and Google Scholar, Google has now slipped down a place, after holding first spot for the past two years.

Indeed, the Apple tree yielded a bountiful harvest, spawning successful ad campaigns for the iMac, the iPod and iTunes. Apple reported an overall net income growth of 300% for 2004, with a net profit of US$ 295 million in the last quarter, alone. This comes to us as no surprise, after noting that iMac sales tripled, and that iPod sold a staggering 4.5 million units last year, in essence, doubling sales since its launch. Apple estimates that there are 10 million pod-addicted people in various parts of the world.

“So, what is at the core of Apple’s tremendous success?” one might ask. It’s sleek Powerbook and ibook designs and innovative features have proven their user-friendliness to even the most technically inept. Furthermore, Apple retail outlets offer customer-friendly interactive pastimes and activities.

It does seem that these high-tech gagets have shown to be as American as Apple pie. However, Apple did not fare as well with international markets, dropping from a 2.19% market share to a 1.87% share in one year.

Leading companies for world market share were Dell, coming in first with a market share at 18%, followed by Hewlett Packard at 16%, followed by IBM at 6%. As a result, Apple is developing new initiatives to bring affordable computing solutions to a global market, hoping that it will result in a bigger slice of the world market pie.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005