Apple scared of Microsoft

You may heard about Microsoft’s New Laptop Hunters ad campaign. The ads specifically target Apple’s Macs as having a higher cost than PCs. Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer, told partners during his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote not only about the upcoming Microsoft Stores this fall to be placed near Apple stores but also about how Apple’s lawyers wanted Microsoft to take down their Laptop Hunter ads.

Here is the excerpt of the Turner’s keynote on Microsoft Presspass.

Now let’s talk about Apple. What are you going to do about those Apple ads? That was a year ago. Gosh, when I went home for the holidays, brothers, sisters, cousins — hey, hope you don’t have anything to do with marketing over there at Microsoft. What are you guys going to do about those Apple ads?

Stay tuned, stay tuned, stay tuned. Wow. Did we punch right back? The PC Hunter ads, the PC Rookie ads clearly have been winners in the marketplace.

I pulled this out of my Sunday newspaper. I have an old habit because I came from retail looking at the Sunday tabs and circulars that are in newspapers. This is straight out of my paper last Sunday. This is a comparison out of a leading electronics retailer that you can get a 13.3-inch Macbook for US$1199 from that retailer. Guess what. That same retailer, you can get the same PC with more RAM, a bigger hard drive, and almost a three-inch bigger screen for US$649. What an incredible opportunity.

And so we’ve been running these PC value ads. Just giving people saying, hey, what are you looking to spend? “Oh, I’m looking to spend less than $1,000.” Well we’ll give you $1,000. Go in and look and see what you can buy. And they come out and they just show them. Those are completely unscripted commercials.

And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)

And i remember, long time back Apple spokesman Bill Evans, told Macworld at the time of releasing the Laptop hunter campaign.

“Millions of people have switched to Mac because they love the security, stability and power that comes with world-class hardware and amazing software that just works, right out of the box,”

“A PC is no bargain when it doesn’t do what you want. The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool; with its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price.”