PC Vendor Go-to-Market Strategies
There are large differences in the market positioning and go-to-market strategies of the major brands of PC in the consumer marketplace. All refelect the legacy of sources of previous growth. The PC businesses of Lenovo (outside China), Dell, Toshiba, and to a lesser extent HP and Acer - have become large PC vendors by serving the needs of businesses, with consumers being historically much less important to their PC sales.
Sony has exceptionally strong consumer recognition and retail distribution, mainly a result of its home entertainment products, and promotes its PlayStation 3 consoles much more heavily than its personal computing products.
Apple, the company which did more than any other business to put personal computers into the hands of ordinary people in the very early days of the personal computing, retreated into the niches of computing for "creative professionals" (graphic designers, print houses, video production, and the like) and in Education markets resulting in some very specialist sales channels being created. In recent years, the Apple iPod an iTunes music store have propelled Apple into one of the world's leading consumer brands, enabling its sales of Apple Mac personal computers to skyrocket.
All of these companies are now vigorously pursuing go-to-market strategies which in different ways address each company's opportunity in the consumer market place. Apart from differences in product strategy and positioning, they differ in the consumer segments they target and in the ways in which they reach and sell to consumers.
Click on the links below to read about each vendor's approach to the consumer PC market:
|
