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Demographically Speaking (8/20/98)
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Still more news comes trickling in about the iMac's introduction last weekend. ComputerWare, the ten-store retail chain in California that seems to wind up getting quoted in just about every news story about the iMac's big launch, apparently issued a press release revealing some preliminary data about just who was buying up all those iMacs. And while we haven't been able to locate the press release on PRNewswire, we'll assume the copy we received in our mailbox is genuine, seeing as it comes from ComputerWare's own veep of marketing, Paul Ramirez...
According to the release, ComputerWare conducted an exit poll of 500 customers who bought an iMac. They've finished tabulating the first third of the responses, and the results are encouraging, to say the least; we had assumed that almost all of the iMacs sold during the premiere weekend would be to existing Mac users who simply couldn't resist the latest insanely great computer from Apple. But according to ComputerWare's data, almost 15% of their iMac customers were buying the first computer for their home. In addition, of those who were buying an iMac to replace an existing machine, a fairly respectable 13% were replacing a Wintel system, not a Mac. That indicates good things to come in terms of market share numbers. And as time passes, word of mouth spreads, the $100 million advertising campaign does its thing, and the fanatical Macophiles among us have all long since already gotten our iMacs, we would expect an increase in the percentage of iMac buyers who are either first-time buyers or soon-to-be-former-Wintel-users.
That's all great news, since a lot of people guessed that the iMac was appealing only to existing Mac users, which would be fine in terms of Apple making a healthy short-term profit, but it would do nothing to ensure the future of the Mac platform by growing the installed base. Thanks to ComputerWare's exit poll, we have some indication that the iMac may be expanding the Mac installed base after all. By the way, when we were digging around on ComputerWare's site to try to find a page containing the press release, to our surprise, we noticed that ComputerWare links to AtAT on their news page. That means all of you AtAT junkies in the Bay Area should give them your money. ;-)
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SceneLink (954)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/20/98 episode: August 20, 1998: A California retail chain reveals that the iMac is selling relatively well among first-time computer buyers and even Wintel users. Meanwhile, the iMac appears to have a little glitch with connecting to non-EarthLink Internet service providers, and Microsoft wins yet another appeal in the increasingly stale saga known as "Redmond Justice..."
Other scenes from that episode: 955: iCan't Connect (8/20/98) Reports of problems with the new iMacs have been surprisingly scarce, and it seems like Apple did a great job of releasing a solid and reliable product. However, we've been having one little problem with ours, and while at first we thought it was perhaps only happening to us, an Inter@ctive Week Online article implies otherwise... 956: Predictable Drama (8/20/98) Oh look, Microsoft's won another appeal in its battle against the Department of Justice. This time, an appellate court overturned Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's ruling that the DoJ's pretrial deposition of Bill Gates should be open to the public...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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