The consumer electronics market is a complex one where Apple has offerings relating to hardware (such as Mac, Ipod, Ipad etc), software (Itunes, Safari, Mac OX), high street retail outlets, and online retailing, and caters for both the business (phones, Mac, etc) and consumer segments of the market (all of the above).
The target consumer ranges depending on the specific product offer, however it is fair to say that generally Apple consumers tend to be more affluent, educated, and willing to pay more for for ease of / better user experience. As founder Steve Jobs once said;
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
In the early days of the Mac computer, Apple's reputation took off, perhaps unsurprisingly, amongst the design and graphics professionals (artists, photographers, designers etc), who loved the additional power and functionality, vs the PC, and spread from there to wider consumers based upon being easy to set up, super intuitive to use and cool (probably because so are the folks from those industries).
I-pod and I-tunes took off with music lovers of all ages, but predominantly is aimed at those in the 13-25 age groups. At the time the first I-pod came out, the idea of one device which could hold a large amount of music was simply more convenient and easy than the pre-existing formats of CD players and Mini-disk, combined with I-tunes where individual songs could be downloaded and out into playlists, its was quicker, more convenient, easy to use, and more tailored to the individuals needs than anything which had gone before.
