http://www.MacKiDo.com/Myths/MacDevelopment.html
What's Marketshare?
Let's pretend the Mac hardware marketshare is as low as 5% of the total
computers sold, it isn't, but I'll get to that later. That is still a silly
measurement. It would be like comparing Boeing's market share to Piper's or
to all vehicles. Remember, something like 75%+ of the game market (unit
sales) is to things other than PC's (GameBoy's, Sega's, Nintendo's and so
on) -- does that mean that the PC's are doomed because the market is too
small percentage wise? Don't be silly.
Marketshare alone is a stupid way to measure potential market because
people are not being wise about what they factor out. Why don't we compare
PC sales to all programmable calculators, toasters with computer chips,
cars with computer chips, game consoles, and so on? Because that
measurement has no value -- people are using them for different things,
they have different markets and so on. Same with Macs and most PC's. Apple
doesn't go into many markets like Uganda or many markets that PC's are in
-- comparing Macs against those markets is silly because few of those sales
will effect Mac sales (or Mac software sales). Compare Macs only in
countries that they participate in, or more accurately in YOUR country,
since that is what you care about. In Canada I think Mac is closer to 25%
and in the U.S. I think it is about 10%. But that still isn't an accurate
measurement of anything.
If you wanted to get a more accurate measurement of System sales you need
to factor out replacement parts -- many PC sales are reflective of all
motherboard sales. PC's have a much shorter life span than the average Mac
(about half), that means more of the sales are just replacements to begin
with. Because motherboards are cheaper for PC's, and required for more
upgrades, the numbers look larger than they are. So many PC's (most) are
just replacements for other broken PC's, but they are counted as new sale!
Many more PC's are being used for test-equipement, kiosk, some are used as
servers (not running application software) than are Macs. Many PC are used
for a thousand uses other than as a PC. All these things mean that a new PC
sold is less likely to be used to run commercial software than a Mac (at
least not normal productivity applications, games, educational software,
web browsing, and so on). So those PC sales need to be factored out, but
aren't. Then you have to remember things like over half the PC's out there
still run either DOS on Win3.1 (which don't really count since new products
don't support them). And then you have to fragment the remaining market
between Win95 and WinNT -- not to mention Unix -- sometimes you can only
support one. So the PC hardare market is not nearly as big or as relevant
to software as people think.
Either the people making the measurements know this and are intentionally
trying to make Apple/Mac look bad by not accurately representing things, or
they are complete fools that can't be trusted with statistics. (I think
that it is both).
Potential Sales Market
What should really matter to consumers is the sales market in their
country, for the application software that they want to use. Like Graphics
market (where Mac is probably 40% of the Market), or Education (60%+),
publishing, general productivity, games and so on. Each market should be
compared seperately, and more importantly does the computer have a
reasonable marketshare in what you care about? I don't care that the Mac
doesn't have a good elevator control and analysis package, as most people
don't -- that should be factored out of sales as well. The real question
is, are there enough machines in markets you care about to keep development
thriving. Is there enough money in writing software for that platform (and
the return on investment high enough) to keep software development going
for your platform.
To get more realistic idea about sales, and what a Mac product would earn,
we can either look at companies that sell Mac products, and see what their
ratios are. This will give us a practical metric for measuring
survivability for a platform. For many companies the Mac can approach 50%
of their market (like Adobe and others). For some, usually the bad
companies, it is as little as 20% (product to product). But conservatively
lets say a Mac product will be 30-40% of total sales (1). Still, if you
have to put in 50% more development costs to get that 35% return, then that
is not a good ROI (Return On Investment) -- good thing it doesn't cost near
that much.
(1) These numbers can be backed up quite easily by going the other way
(look at the PC market). Remember that according to the SPA, PC software
was like 4 or 5 times the size of the Mac -- and over $.60 of every
software dollar in Windows market goes to Microsoft. If you are an ISV
(independent software vendor) on the PC, your market is only 40% of what
you think it is (the rest is going to Microsoft). Then figure there are 2
to 4 times as many competitors for every product. And you will be very
lucky to create a PC software product that is much larger than the Mac
version of that product.
Or if you want to look at total machines sold, we can take the PC's
supposed 90% of the market (actually, I think it is below 80%). Halve it
for DOS and Win3.1 machines (legacy). On the 45%, remove 60% more for
Microsoft's cut. You are already at a market that is about 18% of the
market, compared to Apple's 10% (conservatively). Same numbers -- it always
comes out that the PC market is not nearly as big as people think.
So the reality, no matter how you cut it, is that the PC software market
is likely about 2 to 4 times the Macs -- not the 9 to 10 times that people
tell you. But let's figure out the costs in developing Apps, and see which
is the better ROI.
Cost of development
To develop a product has many variables including:
Business Overhead (administration) and Corporate Infrastructure Marketing
Sales Engineering Design Development (implementation) Testing Support
Whether you are developing one product, or ten, for one platform, or all
of them, these costs are fairly common. Let's look at what it would cost to
make a Mac version of a product, assuming that the product was developed
well in the first place.
Business Costs
Developing a Mac version of a product is not going to change 95% of your
business costs. All these costs are pretty much fixed costs, you need them
to run your company anyway. Cross platform development may raise your costs
by a small percentage (say 5%), but it will not be a big deal. Of all the
business costs, I would be surprised if 10% of infrastructure is actually
in engineering -- usually the majority of real costs are in other areas
(like sales, marketing, management and so on). In other words, adding a Mac
team is likely only to add a very small percentage to your fixed costs.
Advertising (Sales and Marketing)
Advertising can be focused around either brand (corporate) recognition
(with just some mention for each product), or it can be focused around each
product. Usually there is a split. But if you are already trying to achieve
brand recognition and have an advertising presence, the costs to add
"available for MacOS" at the bottom of some ads is nominal (nonexistent).
Excellent ROI for a Mac Application, since your costs don't go up, but your
sales do. Furthermore, you expand your market since there are really 3
markets -- Macs, PC's and cross platform companies. Cross platform
companies are much more likely to choose your PC products if there is a Mac
version.
Of course to run ads in special magazines like Mac Magazines, does
increase your costs, but it also increases your corporate exposure for ALL
products, as well as the Mac. Plus these ads often cost less than the PC
counterparts, and have more impact, since the Mac market is more hungry for
software. Again, a better ROI.
There is also a big cost in paying distributors to put products on the
shelves for PC's, and there is fewer mail-order and direct sales (which
have lower overhead than store front sales) -- which all go to higher
distribution costs on the PC side. Again, you are getting far bigger value
for the buck on the Mac side.
Because there are more PC Apps, to make an impact in the PC arena it costs
more and has less effect. Advertising in the Mac arena has more effect
(since there are fewer competitors), and you can also have an impact on
cross platform users. So ad money spent on the Mac side is far more
effective than on the PC side. But these are a small part of your
operational costs, as compared to the rest of infrastructure costs.
Development
There are many parts of developing a product. People don't understand the
real costs.
Design
The heaviest costs are in the design of the product, both architecturally
and in interface. Contrary to what many realize, probably over 50% of total
development costs go here. Now I consider this to include documentation,
user evaluation, and lots of other nitty gritty stuff that is required to
make a product. Guess what, 100% (or 95%) of this can be leveraged
cross-platform. So the costs of an additional Mac version of a product may
be as high as another 5% of the design costs, which is half of development
costs.
But the reality is really better than that for supporting Macs. PC users
often think only PC'esk and ugly proprietary Microsoft-Windows like ways.
Mac designers are often better in that they think cross platform, and often
understand UI issues better -- so have a Mac design team can actually
reduce the total design costs (or the costs of a bad design). Thinking Mac
is better than thinking PC. Thinking cross platform is better than thinking
just PC (Windows). The end result is that a cross platform product is
almost always better than a Windows only version -- in design, sales,
interface, and so on.
Development (implementation)
Let's say development (implementation) is actually half of what is left of
engineering (or 25% of the total development costs). On a well designed
package you can easily get 50% shared code (across platforms), and closer
to 75% common code if you know what you are doing. So 50% of your
implementation effort (conservatively) comes to any other platforms for
free. Then, on top of that, Mac programmers are usually 2 times more
productive than PC programmers. It isn't that they are that much better, it
is that the platform and environments are that much better. Usually there
is at least a 2:1 ratio of PC programmers to Mac programmers to achieve
feature parity in all the companies I've every worked at or dealt with.
(That isn't counting the cross platform or "engine" teams). I'm not
kidding, and I've talked with people all over the industry. So what are the
additional development costs for a Mac version? About 1/4th (25%) of the
development costs -- and of course the development (implementation) costs
are really only about 1/4th of the total costs.
Testing
Testing probably costs half of what was left (12.5% of development).
Everyone in QA knows that the amount of problems on the Mac are far far
less than the PC (unless you are on Novell networks). Just the number of
platforms you have to test on alone is far smaller, not to mention the
10,000 cards and configurations, and OS's (Win3.1, WinNT, Win95, Win98 that
all behave substantially differently). But lets be ultraconservative and
say the Mac is only 25% as much work.
But wait, it should be less, since many bugs are cross platform (and so
fixing one helps the other). In fact, many times the Macs memory model is a
great way to uncover leaks and other problems on the PC version of the
product -- this means a more reliable PC product by doing a Mac version,
that means a better reputation in the industry, and so on. So the Mac
development ADDS value, and costs very little.
Support
Lets say that support is the remaining 12.5% of the development budget.
Anyone who has worked a support line knows this one -- if the Macs are 1
out of 10 calls then you would have some serious Mac problems (i.e. that
would be high). But we'll play it save and say the Mac is 30% of the
support calls and cost. (On what Planet I'm not sure, but let's pretend).
Total Development costs for adding a Mac version
If we are looking at the real totals for a company to make a Mac product,
the development costs would be roughly as follows:
2.5% -- about 5% of half the development costs for design. 6.25% -- about
25% of 25% of the development costs for implementation 3.125% -- about 25%
of 12.5% of the development costs for testing 3.75% -- about 30% of 12.5%
of the development costs for support
The Mac development is 15% - 20% more than having a Windows only product.
And I am being pretty generous to the PC (against the Mac). A company that
knows what it is doing in cross platform can get these costs down further.
The Mac version (or cross platform development) added a ton of extra value,
in fewer bugs, better design and interface, and so more.
The Mac side has easily the potential of being 40 - 50% of a products
revenues, for 20 - 25% more costs. That is a 2:1 better ROI than investing
money in more PC products. That isn't including the advantages of a more
reliable product, the expanded market (because of cross platform sales), or
the product recognition crossover (added sales on the original platform
because of gained cross-platform customers), and so on. So the issue isn't
whether it makes sense to develop for the Mac because it makes twice as
much sense as developing for the PC alone.
But wait, there's more
Remember that the Mac costs less to develop for, and that the software
market is less saturated. That means that if you are a company, it makes
far more sense to release your product FIRST on the Mac. It will cost you
less to create and support, and you are likely to get more attention for
the product. Then, once you've built a name for yourself and the product,
you can bring that product over to the PC and stand more of a chance of
gaining market share and attention. Where if you release PC first, it is
far easier to get lost in the crowd.
If you doubt this strategy, then you only need look at the big PC software
companies. Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, Quark, Aldus, all got their starts
on the Mac for a reason. Most PC companies that tried to come the other
way, failed. That failure also showed the fundamental problems in those
companies, and with their products. Novell couldn't hack it on the Mac.
Lotus. Ashton-Tate. Where are those companies now? Symantec started going
away from the Mac, and now they are struggling in general. So it seems that
good support of the Mac is an indicator of the company at large. If
companies can't hack doing cross platform development, then they usually
just can't hack the industry at all, and they often fizzle out.
Conclusion
Every time some so called "analyst" prattles off about marketshare, I have
to laugh. These simians are prattling off numbers that are irrelevant, and
are either too stupid to realize it, or they are intentionally defrauding
the public. Neither of which impresses me with them.
When companies start dropping support for the Mac, it is usually an
indicator of far bigger problems than just Apple or the Mac platform --
usually I see a company starting to go into a tailspin and having other
issues. I think of Novell, Electronic Arts, Lotus, Symatec, and all the
companies that coincidentally dropped Mac support and had problems either
right before, or right after that move. Often dropping support was just an
internal political decision or a turf war -- but it is rarely a good
business decision. Some companies can survive their stupidity anyway --
like Autodesk -- but I wouldn't call them thriving or innovative companies.
Usually they are just struggling to retain their marketshare and their
present, and are doing little for their future. Usually, those moves are
the beginning of the end, or at least the beginning of stagnation.
When a writer, an analysts, or the public at large babbles that Mac
development costs too much (and so the Mac is going to die), I have to
laugh. I believe it was Lucas Arts that said that the PC versions of their
products pay for the development -- but the Mac versions are all profit!
Usually the Mac version is at least twice as effective a way to spend
dollars than on the PC alone. Microsoft, Adobe, and many of the big boys
know this. Many small developers are Mac only, because they know this as
well. Only people that don't know my industry and the realities of cross
platform development don't know this. But now you can bludgeon them with
this article to try to beat a little common sense into them. Good luck.
--Happy Holidays! And the best of New Years...
<> tbyars@earthlink.net <>