What kids want for Christmas

[Grieve]

I think these charts and stats are pretty interesting, but without breaking the numbers down, I don't think these are really comparing apples to apples. For example, Apple has only a couple of products that they actively market, and they essentially have one target group that they market to - kids. Microsoft, on the other hand, has all sorts of hardware, software, services, enterprise solutions, etc., that they are marketing to a much wider range of demographics, and need more marketing (and thus, marketing budget) to cover the wider array of products.

Fair point, although apple has more than a couple (iPhone, iPad, iPod, iPad mini, MacBook Air, iMacs, MacBook Pros, AppleTV, etc - all have separate commercials/ads). I would say Apple spends more on TV advertising and Microsoft spends more on print ads, although they've kicked TV ads up a few notches up with Windows 8 and Surface ads - seeing those everywhere. Apparantly they are spending $400m on the Surface launch alone.

Apple gets a lot of free advertising - how many TV shows and movies do you see where they are using macs or iPads?

That said, Apple has more than doubled their marketing spend in the past 3 years, while MS has remained pretty close. Not sure that means anything, really, but just an observation.

Apple has also tripled their market cap and revenue over those 3 years...MS not so much. If you are selling more stuff (and adding more products - the iPad didn't exist 3 years ago) you are going to spend more on ads.

Amazon's marketing spend is curious. Back when I worked there, the mantra was to only use word of mouth advertising (except for the Christmas holidays - they always put out decent Xmas commercials) - actual commercials and big marketing were considered no-no's. But, I guess, now that they have moved beyond a website being their main product, and now they sell actual physical products, they have gotten into the marketing game.

Yeah, I'm guessing the Kindle in particular changed that. It's morphed from just being an eReader to a whole line of products now, from a $69 reader to a $614 9" tablet. And they push their Prime service a lot - not so much the free delivery as the movies and book lending and so on.

Really, you have to give full props to Google, Apple and Amazon - they have defined the modern information age. We don't search for stuff, we "google" it. And no one talks about eReaders, MP3 players, or even tablets - they talk about Kindles, iPods, and iPads. I think they are all great investments (despite Amazon's insane PE). Microsoft had it's day, and I can't see it gaining real relevance again. This is the post-PC era, and Microsoft is way too late to that game.