Sharepoints: The State of the Mac in Germany
25 January 2003
The Mac market in Germany has been over the past several years in a state of turmoil. In fall 2002, Cancom, the largest distributor here in Germany, had a very close fallout with Apple concerning the Europe-wide contract that Apple presented to distributors/dealers. The contract was written under Irish law and left many if not almost all of the dealers with unrealistic stipulations.
Cancom in return published its newest products catalog showing Apple computers on the left half of the page with a comparable PC/windows system on the right half. Cancom also published Apple’s recommended prices for the systems. Apple and Cancom had immediate talks to remedy the situation and things seem to be quiet thereafter. The details of the contract problems were not publicized and a settlement was apparently reached.
Recently, the Mac market has seen an upswing in some sectors. Statistics were released that Apple has doubled its market share in the education branch from 4% to over 8%. In other areas, Mac has like in the U.S. found many new friends in the scientific research community. The home user in Germany still prefers the PC/Windows systems as Apple is somewhat unknown to this group. Due to a lack of advertising on German television and very few local Mac dealers, Apple has no chance of grasping this market. Apple is aware of this and have already made drastic steps to change this.
Apple now sells their iMacs in all Deutsche Telekom technology stores nationwide and have cut a deal to include the German T-Online software with every sold iMac. Other German store chains are now starting to sell Mac products. The famous iMac commercials are being shown in almost every movie theater in Germany in the hopes of catching a young market.
Last but not least comes the graphics and pre-press market. Apple has always had a strong foothold in this sector here in Germany until the last 12 months. Many graphics and pre-press houses are unfortunately switching to the Windows world and that comes down to two factors:
- Processor speed has left Apple looking incompetent.
- No native Quark XPress for Mac OS X
Factor 1 is not only a problem here in Germany. The so called “Need for Speed” is something Apple must deal with in order to win new customers and also bring back its former customers that have made the jump to Windows for production. Factor 2 is without a doubt the biggest reason for the existing establishments to move to Windows. Germany is very structured and precise when it comes to production. German companies use tools that are proven and stick to them. Quark XPress is a tool that is for production, an absolute necessity. The costs for moving to a new layout software—for example, InDesign—and schooling the all of the production people are just too intense.
Some companies are using a mixed Mac environment (Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X) to bridge the gap until the most needed applications are written for new Apple OS. Mac OS X Server has been a widely accepted for most of these companies, though Mac OS X Server Jaguar has not due to the rights and permissions problems that exist with it. Mac OS X Server has opened a new window of opportunity for companies to create multi-service servers that reduce costs, downtime and increase production.
All in all, German graphics companies that have made the move to Windows waiting to see what Apple will do in 2003. In my opinion, this is Apple’s make or break year for the German market.