For a period of time I have been wondering why Macbook Air could occupy a certain percentage of netbook marketshare in spite of its price. It could be partially explained by reasons that there are a certain amount of apple fans (loyal customers) that love and buy whatever Apple sells and Mac Air does fit some customers’ functional as well as psychological need for a portable laptop. However, when a potential buyer, who is not a typical apple fan, applies performance/cost evaluation on a Mac Air at the time he/she is choosing from alternatives, there would be a low possibility that he/she selects a Mac Air. If the market is small, comparing to Apple’s flagship product Macbook Pro,then why would Apple still put so much efforts in developing the new version of Mac Air? I think I kind of find out one more reason when I look into MacAir’s product life cycle.
after figuring out what product life cycle is, I would rather say mac air’s market is growing than saying its small. At this period, competitors come in, in this case, there are some brands coming up with some super light & thin netbooks that claim themselves Air-Killers, such as Sony Vaio X and Samsung X360. These products look fantastics @countering against Mac Air, they understand Mac Air’s weaknesses and thereby improves them, for example, most of them provides more than one USB jack, which is what MAC AIR users complaint about. They sound awesome, however, when it comes to price, it turns out that none of them could compete with Mac Air: Mac Air is at a relativly low price among all these high-end notbooks. Therefore, my understanding is that Mac Air succeed to take the advantage of making the first thinest netbook in the introduction phrase of its product cycle, and now in the growth phrase Apple is able to shift its budget to focus on lowing the cost,and therefore lower price. e.g. the 2010 version of Mac Air sells as cheap as $999, a lot cheaper than its previous version of around $1500.