Microsoft Plays the Price Card in New Ads
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You've heard of the "Apple tax," right? It means paying extra for Apple hardware that's more or less equivalent to what you'd get from, say, Dell. For example, as of right now, you can deploy Dell Vostro notebooks for as little as $399 apiece. Apple's least-expensive MacBook starts at $999. In a spectacular what-took-you-so-long move, Microsoft is playing up this fact in a new series of ads, the first of which you can see above. Titled "Laptop Hunters," the ads follow regular folks as they shop for systems that meet specific needs while falling within a specific budget. Obviously this is a consumer-oriented campaign, but it should serve as a reminder to executives considering a platform switch. (Hey, those "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads can be pretty convincing.) In today's economy, can you really afford extra "taxes" on anything? This may be Microsoft's smartest marketing move since, well, ever. |
Comments (2)
OK, I'm looking at the Apple web site and the cheapest is $1299, not $999.
Now I'm looking at a Dell Vostro with the same size screen - cheapest listed at $664. $600 price difference.
Mac: 2.0GHz Intel Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, NVidia 9400M GPU, 1280x800 pixel screen, 8x SuperDrive with dual-layer burning.
Dell: 2.13GHz Celeron (what, no dual core?), 1GB RAM (not 2?), integrated Intel GPU (snort!), 80GB HD (what, not 160?), ordinary 24xCD/8xDVD recorder.
The machines are hardly comparable - where does Baldmer get his $500 Mac Tax from? If that's MS' best advertising idea ever, they're in trouble.
By the way, have you heard of the IBM Tax? It's about $6,000 so it's an order of magnitude more than the Mac Tax. Really - compare an IBM Blade with an eeePC ...
Posted by Anonymouse | March 29, 2009 1:50 PM
I think a "You can't do that on a Mac" ad would be good.
A PC user playing a Blu-Ray disk.
A PC user using other optional hardware features not available on a Mac.
A PC user playing a Windows-only game, or using other application software not available for Macs.
Posted by JohnJ | March 30, 2009 3:01 PM