For me, the reason we target a Niche market or product is only because there is less competition. Does that mean we can't find something that everyone would be potentially interested in? Of course it doesn't, I believe we just need to understand some concepts of what makes a Business or Product "Universal"

In this tutorial I am going to cover the following:
Examples of Universal Business
Examples of a Niche product
Example of making a Niche "Universal"

For my first example, I want to contrast two companies that started at the same time in a similar market, by two similar people.

You've probably heard of the first one. It's called Microsoft. You might have heard of the second one too, it's called Apple.

Both of these companies started out with Operating Systems. The contrasts start from here though.

Microsoft took the attitude : "We want to make a great Operating System and let anyone use it, it doesn't matter who makes the computer, they can load Windows onto it"

Apple on the other hand took the attitude: "We want to make a superior product, we will not only make the OS, but will also make the computer, the software, the hardware, everything"

Both companies did a pretty good job don't you think? Many people will agree Apple produced a superior product with their first computers, and continued to get better.

Did that superior product result in better sales though? Let's see what percentage of homes have Windows, and what percentage of homes have a Mac Computer:

Windows: 95%
Apple: 5%

So you can see here that Microsoft were using a Universal business plan, Apple were not. Apple of course got around this with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and iDontKnowWhatTheyWillMakeNext but it's interesting to see that even operating within something as global as Computing, you can still be very niche. Therefore, it makes sense that operating in something niche, you can still be very universal right? More on this later. Another example on page 2.