Posted on Thursday, August 07 2008 @ 1:05 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
A new NPD report
compares average sale prices of Mac and Windows Vista PCs and found out the average Mac computer costs twice as much as the average Vista machine:
Interestingly, prices seem to have hit a sweet spot and are quite low, though not moving up or down. Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, who yielded the HP ASP information had this to say of the trend, "We aren't seeing any particularly substantive moves down in price on the Windows side, either in desktops or notebooks."
While obviously it’s comparing apples and oranges, and the products appeal to different markets, it’s interesting to look at how Mac prices have changed versus PC prices. Macs have gone from an average price of $1,432 and $1,574, for desktops and laptops respectively in June '06 to $1,543 and $1,515 respectively in June '08. While much lower to start, PCs are now even lower in average sale price. The average PC notebook went from $877 to $700, while the average desktop dipped just barely from $559 to $550.
Vista PCs have reached a sweet point with pricing that is appealing not just to the high end crowd, but to the masses. And while prices are staying constant, hardware features are increasing, which is good for the consumer. As Mr. Baker puts it, "Of course there is feature creep—there always is."
