Rosier results for Apple Germany
During a news conference last week, Pascal Cagni, vice president of Apple Europe, and Reiner Deichmann, channel-sales director and interim country manager for Apple Germany revealed that Apple Germany had a 62 percent increase in revenue.
"Germany is the most important market for Apple in Europe," Cagni said, as the two executives described the Mac's recent inroads with German professionals and consumers alike.
According to Deichmann, the company's efforts to boost its German market share has borne fruit: Apple Germany enjoyed a 30 percent increase in its customer base over the past fiscal year while enjoying strong sales to professional customers.
Deichmann also pointed to new sources of revenue -- such as Web publishing and e-commerce -- that have been stimulated by Germany's embrace of the Internet. "This area of business is new to us, and we intend to be in the lead soon," Deichemann said.
Apple Germany has continued to maintain momentum in the Mac's core creative markets: Major publishing companies such as Axel Springer, Burds, Gruner & Jahr , or Heinrich Bauer Verlag have been lucrative customers of the company's high-end Power Mac G4s, and new customers include such economic powerhouses as BMW, Porsche, Citibank, VW, and the BVB Soccer Club.
Apple (aapl) managed to increase its overall share of the German market from 1.5 percent in 1998 to 2.4 percent this year.
Most notable were Apple Germany's gains in the home market: According to Deichmann, the company's share of consumers grew from 0.8 percent in 1998 to 3.4 percent in 2000, despite a slump in the euro currency and an increase in domestic competition within the PC market.
"Because of a lower penetration of the Internet [in Germany], the new iMacs and their price points will be the major growth drivers," Cagni said. He also predicted that iMovie 2 -- the latest version of Apple's consumer video-editing software -- will help lure customers in Germany, which already has more than 300,000 camcorder owners.
While Cagni praised the unique product design of Apple's Power Mac G4 Cube, he acknowledged that the new desktop system hasn't sold well in Germany. In order to increase the success of the Cube, Apple reduced the bundle price for a Power Mac G4 Cube and a Studio Display up to 750 deutsche marks (about $320 U.S.) for the rest of year. In the United States, Apple last week announced a $300 rebate on Cubes after blaming its disappointing fourth-quarter financial performance on slow sales of the desktop systems.
In addition, Cagni said, the retail situation could still use improvement. Even though Apple is carried by 220 retailers, including Media Markt, Saturn, Karstadt, Schaulandt, and Gravis, the lack of knowledgeable Apple sales reps has hurt Apple, he said. As a result, Cagni said Apple plans to focus more on enhanced training for all retail sales reps moving Macs in Germany.