Apple's Increase in Popularity With Gen Y Influences Industry Changes Across the Technology Sector

The combination of Apple's casual marketing plan and high quality products have struck a target market that has been hard to reach for most major companies. The tech savvy Generation Y (aka Millennials) have been characterized as being brand apathetic, resenting obvious ad campaigns that target their psychological profile, who are now the Applephiles supporting everything Apple; they also happen to be 32% of the consuming population. Apple's advertisements lately have been mostly for the iPod/iTunes/iPhone line of products, but all that buzz has rubbed off on the less publicized Mac.

While recently Apple's Mac didn't have the most spectacular growth with 26% (compared to competitors, Acer saw an explosion of 164% and Tobisha saw a 54% growth) the story doesn't lie in any specific percentages, it's the fact that Apple understands its target market, which has allowed them to tie with Gateway for market share. But PC makers aren't the only ones that need to worry about Apple growth in their markets, the recent iPhone has demonstrated that any market in the technology sector could be threatened by Apple. The Millennials are a generation big enough to hurt a boomer brand simply by giving it the cold shoulder.

It is first noted in 1999 that Apple realized that targeting Gen Y could be extremely beneficial though they weren't exactly on target when Allen Olivo, Apple's previous senior director for worldwide marketing, said, 'For this generation, the computer is like a hot rod. Still, acknowledging Gen Y early on proved beneficial as some of history's biggest brands got started by bonding with boomers early and following them from youth into middle age.

Apple was one of the first to truly reach Generation Y, and are now duly positioned at the top of Gen Y's list of trusted brands. Now that Gen Y has begun trickling into the marketplace, Apple has the power to influence a majority of technology consumers, a leading edge that no competitor has been able to recreate.

Apple has mastered how to identify the unknown (not merely unmet) needs of consumers, all while allowing them to feel good about their own values. While Apple's competitors have figured out that Gen Y is attracted to quality products, they haven't picked up on the fact that the typical in-your-face marketing is what drive this generation away. Unless the once dominating companies that followed the boomers figure out this atypical marketing schema, along with their corresponding generation.