...and sometimes they do something completely different. One company that changed focus and held onto their brand name is the UK's Whitbread. They had a virtual monopoly on beer and public houses in southern England up until some time in the 1980's, then, for no obvious reason, they sold all of the brewing interests, bought a coffee chain, a few hotels and some gyms. They kept onto the Whitbread name which was once synonymous with beer even though they moved so far away from the stuff that they most definitely were not the same company. There is no 'consumer recognition' as they trade on the High Street with different names - 'Costa Coffee' etc. - but they do trade on the stock market as Whitbread.
Back to the point in hand, Apple have somehow managed to make themselves de-facto for musicians, video editors and people that draw pretty pictures in Photoshop. These are the 'halo' users and mere mortals that think of themselves as possibly being creative one day buy Apple in part because that is what the creative professionals use. The fact they get no further than 'Crazy Birds' on their iPad Air is neither here or there.
HP should have worked on a similar strategy but in the 'technicial/scientific' sphere rather than the 'creative' sphere. They should have listened to and looked after the customer base they had built up from selling things like 'scopes so that the de-facto kit to buy for anyone doing anything vaguely technical was HP. This too could have had a halo effect, so anyone studying something like engineering would instinctively want to buy HP rather than some other cheap Chinese junk.
>mere mortals that think of themselves as possibly being creative one day buy Apple in part because that is what the creative professionals use. The fact they get no further than 'Crazy Birds' on their iPad Air is neither here or there.
I keep hearing this sentiment bandied around but I have seen no evidence of it in real life. Most of the "mere mortals" I know that use macs don't make any pretensions beyond "its much nicer and I can afford it." Nobody is saying to me "I bought it because I fantasise that one day I'll run a recording studio from it." And who on earth buys iPhones and iPads to be "creative?" What a load of nonsense.
If you ask the average 1st world human being "What are Macs good at?" They usually say something about ease of use and multimedia stuff. It's just what people think.
Now, on my Mac, I do exactly zero multimedia related things. So I agree that the multimedia thing isn't necessarily true, but that's what I hear about Macs from not-technicals.
Back to the point in hand, Apple have somehow managed to make themselves de-facto for musicians, video editors and people that draw pretty pictures in Photoshop. These are the 'halo' users and mere mortals that think of themselves as possibly being creative one day buy Apple in part because that is what the creative professionals use. The fact they get no further than 'Crazy Birds' on their iPad Air is neither here or there.
HP should have worked on a similar strategy but in the 'technicial/scientific' sphere rather than the 'creative' sphere. They should have listened to and looked after the customer base they had built up from selling things like 'scopes so that the de-facto kit to buy for anyone doing anything vaguely technical was HP. This too could have had a halo effect, so anyone studying something like engineering would instinctively want to buy HP rather than some other cheap Chinese junk.