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August 6, 2008

rivals

On average, Macs are twice as expensive as PCs…oh noez!

Posted Aug. 6, ’08, 2:50 PM PT by Thomas Gagnon-van Leeuwen
Category | Apple » Rivals

It’s no secret that as a general rule, Macs are more expensive up front than Windows boxes from the likes of Dell and HP. Despite a few exceptions, equivalent hardware will be cheaper on the PC side. But the specs/value ratio has never been a reason for choosing an Apple computer, and the higher prices haven’t stopped Apple from increasing its market share.

According to the NPD Group, the gap in average selling prices has widened over the last couple of years. This June, Macs desktops went on average for $1,543, up from $1,432 two years ago; meanwhile, PCs were essentially stable at $550. On the laptop front, the difference is smaller: the average selling price for a Mac notebook is $1,515 ($60 less than in June of 2006). On the Windows side, that number is $700, down from $877.

Phew, that’s a lot of numbers and dollar signs. Over at eWeek, Joe Wilcox tries to make a sense of them, citing the fact Apple should be about to refresh its notebook line. This all comes back to Oppenheimer’s cryptic conference call allusion to a future “product transition” that would reduce the company’s gross margin. We’ll see in the near future.

Also, it’s good te remember that we’re talking price here, and not value for the money. In that category, Apple probably also gets its butt kicked by its competitors if only raw specs are considered, but not as much. And that’s before considering Mac OS X’s advantages.


13 Comments

godDLL said:

Total cost of ownership anyone? Maintenance?
How about the similarly spec'd notebooks from the PC world carrying a desktop processor, with obscene actual battery life figures, or similar blunders?
The specs are there not to make a bullet list.
If you get an actual equivalent to Apple's offering within three months before/after launch you're getting a far biggier TOC in the PC world.

August 6, 2008 4:51 PM
spruiked Author Profile Page said:

I'm with godDLL. You can get figures to show whatever you want. What I can tell you is that I went shopping for a laptop for my partner two weeks ago and the "low end" MacBook was priced right at the bottom end of the spectrum. Now my guess is that the vast majority of Mac buyers are home-users, so lets compare apples with apples.

August 6, 2008 7:11 PM
Chris said:

No one ever (and I mean NEVER) talks about resale of Macs and PCs. I know that my original 500MHz Titanium G4 Powerbook cost way more than it did for people who bought a similarly equipped Dell or HP. But I sold my Powerbook for $1700 (half what I paid) and bought a 933MHz G4 tower. Then I sold the G4 tower for about $1200 and bought a dual-processor 2.0GHz G5 tower. I sold the G5 for $1600 and bought a black Core Duo MacBook. I sold that on eBay for $1000 and bought a Core 2 Duo 24" iMac.

My initial barrier to entry was high but once I had my foot in the door it cost me very little to upgrade to a newer computer because I got so much money from the sale of my previous Macs. Can anyone with any PC come even close?

What about total cost of ownership over a lifetime?

August 6, 2008 7:34 PM
Mark said:

I bought my Mac because here in japan it was cheaper than a PC.

August 6, 2008 8:52 PM
t said:

I own a powerbook G4 which is about 4 years old running leopard perfectly fine. In that same time a family member has been through 3 Dell's priced at $1500, A sony laptop, and a HP laptop. Do the math - sure in the short term a PC looks more attractive....but as someone has indicated it is truly about total cost of ownership. I'm sure my powerbook will outlast a few more PC's before I have to replace it. I'm not even factoring in Leopard and the iLife suite.


August 6, 2008 9:38 PM
spiderbat said:

Statistics is a science by itself, but every moron with a calculator can stretch it to yield results that mean just nothing, or the exact opposite of factual truth.
In this case, the original article refers to "Average Selling Prices", but, what does it mean? We know perfectly well that a lot of pc users have very low expectations from their contraptions and buy at El Cheapo.
And perhaps they're right: why should one buy an expensive vessel to fill it with some crappy stuff like "Vista"?
An ASP of $1515 for Mac laptops, while the prices start from $1100 does only mean that a significant percentage of Mac customers are willing to spend more to get the enhanced functionality of "Air" and "Pro" models.

August 7, 2008 3:00 AM
JM said:

Good point on resale Chris.

I agree we need to compare prices of similarly spec'd PCs and laptops and not a general average price across models.

Most likely, the pro models are skewing the average price higher.

August 7, 2008 6:53 AM
BillR said:


AVERAGE price of a PC notebook is 700, meaning that there are as many below that price as above that price (I know the difference between average and median, just making a point)??? My wife is a not-quite-converted soul, so she is looking for a PC notebook, and I want to know where I can find PC notebooks that cheap!

Or, I can just give her more time with my macbook so she will see the light.

August 7, 2008 8:41 AM
MK said:

I bought a Macbook in October 2007. I also looked at Dell XPS 1330 and a Sony with a 13 inch widescreen. To get even close to the Macs specs would have cost several hundreds more and neither had the processing power of the Mac. They were also loaded with Vista and way too much "demo" software. I have no regrets for buying my Mac.

August 7, 2008 8:49 AM
exPCuser said:

Is this article sponsored by MSFT? Another article on MacWorld just proved Macs are priced competitively with PCs equipped with equivalent components, and in case of MacPro it is even cheaper to buy from Apple than building it by yourself! How come MacWorld allows posting such bias articles???

August 7, 2008 9:30 AM
Dan Moren Author Profile Page said:

@exPCuser: Keep in mind that we're talking *average* prices here. The reason Apple's selling prices are *on average* so much higher is that they choose mostly not to compete in the sub-$1000 market, whereas many PC vendors regularly price computers at $500 or in some cases even less. And remember that this isn't comparing computers with similar specs, as the piece you mention does, it's comparing the average selling price of all PCs with the average selling price of all Macs.

August 7, 2008 9:48 AM
toddgarvin Author Profile Page said:

I saw this story on a couple of other sites. One thing that was mentioned was that a Dell is a lot cheaper than a Mac when comparing similar systems. However, their math was wrong because if you build the same machine they refer to on Dell's site, it costs considerably more than they claim.

Also, lets compare two truly similar computers from Apple and Dell -- Apple 20" iMac ($1499) versus Dell 20" XPS ONE ($1499 after $300 savings). These would be similar computers targeted at similar markets. As I've already stated the pricing is the same.

CPU:
Dell: C2D 2.33GHz
Apple: C2D 2.66 GHz

RAM:
Dell: 2GB (667MHz)
Apple: 2GB (800MHz)

Hard Drive:
Dell: 320GB SATA
Apple: 320GB SATA

CD/DVD:
Dell: 8x slot-loading
Apple: 8x slot-loading

Video:
Dell: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2400 (??Mb)
Apple: ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO 256Mb

Looks to me like the APPLE wins in a straight up hardware comparison. Without Dell's "savings" you would actually be paying $300 MORE for the Dell with a slower processor and slower video. Plus there is no iLife on a Dell. ;-)

Any Mac haters care to comment on this info???

August 7, 2008 10:14 AM
Skullduggery said:

This data shows very little. Two car manufacturers could have a very similar lineup of vehicles: let's say Toyota's Camry and Corolla vs. Honda's Accord and Civic. About similar cars with about similar prices (Camry vs. Accord, Corolla vs. Civic). Their ASP will be about the same.

But if Honda also sells a lot of really expensive cars, their ASP will go up. Previous surveys have shown that Mac users tend to be wealthier and more educated than non-Mac users. Could it be that, as many surveys (and my own verification have found—you can try to), that one could buy a similarly configured Dell laptop and MacBook but that there are a lot of people who chose a loaded up MacBook Pro instead?

The data DOES NOT SAY that Macs are twice as expensive as PCs. Rather, the data says that a person buying a Mac spends, on average, twice as much as another person buying a non-Mac.

When you say it's good to remember we're talking about price, it would also be good if you would remember that we're talking about an average selling price WITHOUT CONTROLLING FOR CONFIGURATION.

What happened to logic and critical thought?

August 7, 2008 1:16 PM

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