Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 11:30:11 +0100 From: Phil Regnauld <regnauld@ftf.net> To: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> Cc: David Scheidt <dscheidt@enteract.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Marketing vs. technical superiority (was: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit") Message-ID: <19991119113011.62880@ns.int.ftf.net> In-Reply-To: <000401bf3275$9dcc7d50$021d85d1@youwant.to>; from David Schwartz on Fri, Nov 19, 1999 at 02:05:32AM -0800 References: <19991119102553.57394@ns.int.ftf.net> <000401bf3275$9dcc7d50$021d85d1@youwant.to>
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David Schwartz writes: [deletia] > What's actually puzzling is why software prices in markets dominated by one > company are as low as they are. One theory is that it's too easy for a As _low_ ? In Europe, Microsoft's practice has been to: - lower prices in the countries where it still had competition (WordPerfect vs. Office, for example. Or OS/2 here). - raise the prices again as soon as it had achieved market domination Win95's price != Win98 price, for example. Price is an illusion in the mass software market. > As soon as the price rises enough, a new company could develop a competing product and sell > massive numbers of copies in very short order. So where's the, uh, competition ? MS judged that $89 was the right price for 98, when all showed, marketing wise, that $69 would have worked. ... or the fact that the French Canadian edition of MS Office, which is MUCH cheaper than the French national edition, is not to be sold OR imported in France unless you want to get your ass sued. > Keeping software prices low > maximizes the amount of time market domination can be maintained. Prices for MS products are HIGH. NT Server license unlimited is MORE expensive than Solaris unlimited... > once. Then I have it and could keep using it forever. They have to sell me a > new word processor to maintain sales, and to do that, they'll have to > convince me not to keep using my old one. That will take some sort of > innovation. The staple innovation has been new or combined features. That's 1/3 of the game. The real reason is COMPATIBILITY! My mom couldn't read Word 97 documents -- so guess what happened to her word 6.0 ? 10% of the people upgrade cause they can afford it and they want the bells and whistles, and HOPE for bug fixes. The rest follow because they HAVE to to maintain the "Fax Machine" effect (as people like to call it). > And, of course, if the market leader falls too far behind what is possible, > price will become irrelevant. Price _is_ irrelevant. Software industry is the only industry where you can sell the same products N times. Shoot me if I'm wrong, but I'll stick to my observations. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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