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i-pod to lead Apple focus on retail market

With a 2 per cent market share in the CPU market, Apple continues to focus on its core competency, which has traditionally been educational institutions, the printing and publishing industry and photo editing, thus avoiding spreading themselves too thin.

Elias Abou-Rustom, General Manager of Arab Business Machines, the independent marketing company for Apple in the Middle East, told the Khaleej Times that in 2004 Apple’s share of the retail market in the Middle East has grown by 49 per cent from previous years, due in large part to being extremely proactive in the market, i-pod’s market share has increased by 22 per cent alone.

“I am not going to be too optimistic and say we will sustain this high level of growth, but it shows that we are on the right track,” Abou Rustom said. He rightly pointed to certain obstacles that have prevented Apple from taking a bigger bite from the home and office personal computing market, first among these is the fact that the PC (IBM-compatible) has many hardware vendors, while Apple does not, in addition Apple has fewer game titles.

He did point out that Apple’s 2 to 3 per cent market share is growing, adding that the “halo effect” that was the result of i-pod’s success in the market, has had a positive impact on users who have looked favourably on purchasing Apple computers.

“Early this year we initiated our aggressive and highly pro-active retail expansion plan. In 2005 we expect another jump in retail sales, from our digital hub for home users, which incorporates photo, movie and music suites, which is very popular and easy to use, to the very popular i-pod. We have seen regular annual growth of between 15 to 20 per cent,” Abou Rustom said.

He said that the new Mac OS X operating system has more than 8,000 applications that offer a PC user a wide range of applications that are used on daily basis. He said that Apple’s share of the CPU market continues to growth, with laptops taking the lion share.

Among the products on offer from Apple is the Power Mac G5, the eMac, the Power Book with a 17 inch monitor and 1.5 Ghz processor, the iBook, the iMac G5, the iSight and the iPod, as well as its Xserve and Xserve Raid and Airport wireless hub.