So, what market are you in?
Posted by Giles Lury on October 30, 2012
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Marketing is all about perspective.
Some recent figures provided a wonderful example of the way in which how you define your market and your competition affects how you will see your performance.
The launch of Windows 8 has encouraged people to take a look at how well Microsoft is doing. According to research firm Canalys, three years ago many commentators would have said their market share was over 95%, but most believe that ‘market’ changed with the launch of the iPad because tablets are effectively PCs. They don’t need to be connected to a network to work and they run third-party applications. Once you reframe the market in this way then Windows share of the global “PC market” falls to 72%.
If you then add the PC market together to the smartphone market (which some analysts call the intelligent device sector) then Windows’ share falls to only 32%. Now think about how important Windows 8 is to Microsoft.
The other famous example of this that is often quoted was Coca Cola, which was the dominant cola party but defined its market as ‘share of throat’, in which case its share was in single figues and it had over 90% of occasion to target for growth.
All of which prompts just one question - how do you define your market?
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