Trixter aka Bret McDanel wrote: > On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 15:26 -0400, Steve Totaro wrote: >> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 3:12 PM, Jay R. Ashworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> You didn't read what *I wrote*. I'm discussing telephony markups >>> (40-50%, traditionally) vs PC markups (10%, on a good day, downhill, >>> with a tailwind). >> You obviously were off topic since this thread is about the 3com >> Asterisk Appliance and you never addressed the question that Trixter >> posed for this product's price.... Do you have an answer? > > Yes, why is it 40-50% traditionally? I am really curious, especially > since you keep refusing to answer and are telling others that their > answer is wrong.
I would venture that the answer has something to do with the relationship between cost structures and the externally perceived value, and the way in which those margins can dissipate when markets "correct" or "rationalise." From the very beginnings of the personal microcomputer industry, PC hardware has been based on largely interchangeable, commodity components (the efforts of Compaq and Dell and such to make proprietary cases and memory and so on notwithstanding). Open standards and architectures, even to the extent they exist in the PC hardware world, create aggressive competition and downward price pressure as the barriers to entry are lower. In fact, the manufacturers of the first personal computers in the early 1980s deliberately structured things this way; commodity hardware is a complementary good that helps sell more PCs. You can see how this plays out today, for instance, when a gamer decides to get a new computer because that would pretty much be required, from a technical perspective, to make effective use of their brand new top-of-the-line nVidia card so they can play a new, top-of-the-line video game that requires a 500 Terahertz GPU and so on. This puts PC hardware _comparatively_ (and only comparatively so) closer to the idealised "perfect competition" of certain economic sectors where the product is fully commoditised and near-perfect market information exists. Contrast this with the proprietary, black-box architecture of most traditional telephone systems and communications gear. The standards are not open, the components are largely proprietary, and to the extent that specifications and interoperability exists, it is still circumscribed to a much more narrow pool of possible intra-industrial players. In such a situation, what the market will bear can be much more loosely coupled to the cost structure of the underlying production. That's why proprietary stuff in general (excluding really, really generic commodities and other things that are relatively trivial) pretty much always entails higher margins. The price can float more freely, far less anchored to the underlying production costs; (1) There is not a lot of competition to drive it down, and (2) the competition that does exist is rather an oligopoly, which usually has the consequence of some degree of collusion to support certain prices and margins, and (3) Even to the extent that interchangeability of products exists, they are all mathematically and technically incommensurable to a far greater degree than commodity goods, as far as the impact of that commensurability on causing margins to move toward a highly visible, open cost structure that has vivid external definition to other market participants. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov Evariste Systems Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel : (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671 Mobile : (+1) (706) 338-8599 _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com-- asterisk-biz mailing list To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz