#Titel Jokes & Stories / Englisch / Car Market Shares
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Car Market Shares
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From: Guy Kawasaki <gkawasaki@macway.com>
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Just saw the 1997 Market DataBook of Automotive News. Here's some
interesting market share data for the U. S. light-vehicle sales and market:

Total of all European manufacturers: 5.9%

BMW 1.2%
Mercedes 1.1%
Porsche .1%

I know I'll get email about how the analogy between car and computer market
share doesn't work. In advance, consider this:

- "Cars don't need specific ("BMW") gas, so the analogy is meaningless."
  Well, Macintoshes don't need special Macintosh electricity.

- What would happen if your favorite European car manufacturer went out
  of business? There might not be parts, service expertise, and dealers.
  Ergo, everyone should buy a Ford (14.5%) or Chevrolet (12.3%). I wonder
  what the execs of the SJ Mercury and Wall St. Journal drive.

- Cars don't have the flexibility and safety of data transferability--ever
  try to put a GMC engine in a BMW? Macintosh has software emulation (Virtual
  PC and Soft PC), hardware co-processing, file compatibility, and file
  translation.

- Cars cost tens of thousands of dollars. My goodness, one should really
  be "safe" and buy the car that everyone else does because so much money
  is involved. A computer is only $2,000 or so, so wouldn't this mean one
  could be more "daring?"

- "Software developers won't write software for such a small market."
  Then Sun and SGI should be toast soon. In the car world, there are
  "developers" that thrive by focusing on "insufficient platforms" like BMW
  (Dinan) and Mercedes (AMG). Greed abhors a vacuum--maybe some developers
  will stop doing Macintosh software, but then other, smaller ones will see
  the small pond as a way to be a big fish.

And heck, doing a Windows product is a guarantee of wealth--just ask
WordPerfect, Lotus, and Ashton-Tate.

Something that I haven't been able to figure out is that when it comes
computers (unlike any other product I can think of), the prestigous/right/smart
thing to do is portrayed as buying the same computer that the rest of the
world does. Think about it: What other product can you name where people are
supposed to say, "Gosh, I want to be the same as 95/100 people."?

I can't wait until I can buy a car with a smaller market share than the
one I have. It will match my computing tastes perfectly. :-)

#C31
Guy