Students Will Help save Apple

Negative news are all around and its hard not to get depressed because of it. Home prices keep on sliding, credit is slowly drying up and inflation is on the rise. Consumer confidence also became lowest in years.

You might think that this would be a hazard to the business of Apple. The company’s pc tends to be more expensive that Dell or Hewlett-Packard while its iPods and iPhones are often cut out by consumers during an economic slowdown.

Paul Kedrosky thinks Apple is about to take a hit from the economy problem. The Kauffman Foundation senior officer who edits the business and economics blog Infectious Greed recently argued on Yahoo's Tech Ticker that since Apple's products are "aspirational," consumers can do without them and go instead for cheaper alternatives from others, or stop electronics purchases altogether. He is expecting Apple to miss its earnings targets for the current quarter.

Computer Sales Matter

This speculation would be reasonable until you start looking at what is driving Apple. For the popularity iPhone has been getting, Apple’s performance in the quarter ending will be determined by the sales of its computers.

For the new school season, college kids are buying Macs in great number than before. A recent survey by Student Monitor, a New Jersey outfit that tracks the buying habits of college students, found that 13% of all undergrads expect to buy a new notebook this fall. Of those, 43% say they plan to get a MacBook or MacBook Pro, nearly double those who said they expected to get a Dell notebook, says Eric Weil, the firm's managing partner. While students prefer Dell for desktop computers, students favor notebooks over desktops by a factor of nearly 5 to 1.

You'll probably find many new Mac-users like Joe Praetorius of Springs, Texas. The 17-year old is going to Houston's Media Tech Institute to study sound engineering. I heard that the Mac was best for sound engineering and editing, he says.

Gina Elliott, of Bronxville NY, who's headed to Georgetown University got her first Mac earlier this year after finding Windows irritating. She used it for her entire computer-using life. Things were difficult to find and it took a long time to figure things out. Just this week, she convinced her Mom to switch.