[davidalln]

"Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content, Anderson said. He added that the company expects to gain a higher percentage of its revenues from software and services in these core markets in the future."

Interesting how this gives us a bit of insight on the shift in business plans even before the iMac was officially announced. Obviously they picked the correct market to focus on going into the 2000s, but I wonder what made them specifically choose the "education and creative markets" 15 years ago.

[fleitz]

It wasn't until Photoshop 2.5 that Adobe even had a Windows version. Look at PageMaker / Quark and it's the same story.

Education and creative markets were the bread and butter of Apple for the 80s and 90s, it's a no brainer business-wise.

At the time this article was written Jobs had been CEO for a month, it's a basic play to reassure the market and boost a falling stock price. If you look at what Apple actually did it was to move into consumer electronics. A transition that is arguably complete with iPad. The machine people consume software with is finally different from the machine they produce software with.

[jasonford1]

To continue your thought, this was the most brilliant move Jobs made by moving the consumption off the machine that produced. Now jobs can control the distribution from the machine that produces content to the machine that consumes content. He plays middle man, owns the vertical, and collects 30% every time a purchase is made. I wonder how much this strategy evolved from the early days or if the idea of separating content and owning the distribution channels was the strategy from day one. Either way it is clear in hind sight that the play payed off.

On a side note I saw a statistic earlier (reference has been lost) which said Apple sells 10% of consumer computers but captures over 50% of the industry profit. I would search for the reference in a different tab, but I'm on my iPad and can't. Thanks Steve.

[fleitz]

I believe the 50% profit figure is for "smart phones". I think DHH mentioned it in a video. Not sure what the primary source is. http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/while-rivals-jockey-for-mar...

This is the best reference I can find for it.

[megablast]

They were always focused on the education market, with deep discounts to schools, way before the imac. I think the logic was that you get the kids early, then they buy macs when they grow up, and want to use them at work. Also, if everybody had skills in using macs, then companies would be buying mac rather than IBM PCs.