Stardate 20010802.1251 (On Screen via motion detectors): This apology tries to rationalize that it's completely OK for Apple to only have 3% market share. After all, Porsche only has 0.2% market share and does fine, right? The situations are not analogous. Porsche can survive at that level because its cars burn the same gas as do Chevrolets. What if a Porsche could only burn specialized Porsche-specific fuel? Could there be a reasonable network of Porsche-gas stations with an installed base that small? What kind of price would they ahve to charge for the fuel, and would even rich people looking for a trophy be willing to pay it? There's a good reason why Porsche doesn't make cars that burn
nitromethane.
The comparable thing for Apple is application software. There exist PC makers whose market share is smaller than Apple's (Micron PC, for instance) but their products use the same software as Dell and Compaq and all other PCs. They use the same gas stations. But Apple's product needs its own; its apps are not compatible. This means that Apple, unique among manufacturers of desktop computers, needs an entirely separate retail support structure of stores and of ISVs to create products for those stores. That, in turn, means that the absolute installed base of Apple's computers has to be large enough to create a market big enough to sustain that structure, irrespective of how large any competing systems are. By being different, Apple also has to go it alone. It can't leverage off of overall market mass or share the expense of the support structure with other companies. It may well be (some might claim) that Mac software is nitromethane, but regardless of performance that still makes it rare and expensive, or potentially could make it become rare and expensive. (This is what killed OS/2, for instance.)
Apple is unique among desktop computer makers in that a 3% share really may spell trouble. It remains to be seen whether that really is adequate for an incompatible architecture. The ISVs have been very nervous about it for a long time, and if they abandon the platform then it is walking dead. (discuss)
