Technology Pundits: Lenovo Beats Apple in Photography Jan 30, 2009 – By Rob Enderle
One of the key areas for Apple, and one they generally dominate, is in media creation and editing. They have been doing so well that in video editing in particular they have been carving huge chunks out of Avid who has historically owned this segment buy providing significantly more bang for the buck. But an even larger market is photography and here Apple's minimalistic product line approach may be putting them at a disadvantage to Lenovo.
Apple's Approach
Apple's market approach is unlike any other OEM. Most PC companies build a large number of very different products under a number of lines to try to create products that mirror what buyers already want.
Apple has few products under few lines and instead outspends the other OEMs on marketing to drive people to the products Apple has created.
While there remains a question just how well the Apple model can scale, there is no question that it has historically resulted in greater brand loyalty, higher margins, and recently growth in line with the leaders in the PC market.
Using this same strategy they have dominated the MP3 market and are the only cell phone vender who can create lines around stores when they launch cell phone offerings. However, the downside to this approach is that it is an all or nothing thing.
The downside to missing is much more dramatic for them than it is for the other OEMs but they don't seem to miss very often at all which speaks as much about the quality of the marketing efforts as it does the quality of their products.
But it does leave them vulnerable to Cherry Picking.
Cherry picking is when a competitor specifically targets a group with a product that is uniquely designed for that group.
Lenovo and the W700
The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 is a unique laptop specifically built for the media creation and engineering markets. It sports a much more color accurate display than the latest MacBook Pro, has more performance (both processor and graphics), a digitizer, and it is the first laptop with multiple screens built in.
Where the advantages are showcased are in this (http://www.robgalbraith.com) article which compares the MacBook pro to the 700 for photography and finds the Mac inferior. It does identify a $200 modification that can be made to the Mac that improves its usefulness but even with the modification the Lenovo appears to beat it handily.
Apple still leads with marketing but Lenovo has an interesting stealth spot (http://www.youtube.com) up on YouTube, which if you look closely, actually takes a shot at the Mac. Look closely at the computer the woman in the video is using.
Wrapping Up
Apple's success largely depends on the success of their marketing and the ability to get close enough to their average buyer, they can be cherry picked though and Lenovo's ThinkPad W700 is an example of how that can be done.
