On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 5:58 PM, Alex Balashov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Alex Balashov wrote: > >> The price can float more freely, > > far less anchored to the underlying production costs. > > To expand on this a little bit: > > Say you want to be a wheat farmer. Wheat doesn't have a lot of > differentiation points that have a grandiose impact on price. Sure, > there are different types of wheat, grown under different conditions, > and so on, but as much as they're different, they are also, in very > significant ways, the same -- it's still wheat. Wheat is wheat. > > The agricultural processes involved in producing wheat are well-known > and easily discoverable. There are abundant quantities of wheat > ubiquitously consumed across a broad swath of economic sectors and > market segments, at all levels of income and so on. So, the real > question in going into wheat production is simply whether you want to do > it -- that is, whether you want to and are able to make the investments > in capital machinery, land, seed, and so on, and whether you can make it > scale in a way that is competitive and make it efficient enough to > compete with modern, high-volume agro-industrial conglomerates. > > Aside from that, though, it's not really hard to figure out what the > machinery costs, what the land costs, what the seed costs, and what kind > of pricing your competitors are getting from this source, that source, > to make this type of wheat, that type of wheat, and the techniques they > use to get this yield and that yield and sell it here or sell it there, > and so on. > > That is the main reason why it is structurally a commodity, aside from > its ubiquity. This dynamic results in a very visible cost structure > that creates aggressive competition almost exclusively focused on price. > As said before, wheat is wheat. The way that you innovate your way into > success as a wheat-grower is by tweaking various parts of the process on > an economic level; increasing efficiency, finding ways to squeeze down > the prices of your inputs, and so on. In marketing wheat, you can't > really tack a lot of "value-added" characteristics onto it stemming from > some sort of inherent opacity. It's wheat. > > That's kind of how it is with PC hardware, although obviously, not > immensely so. > > Proprietary communications systems are not like that at all, and have > not ever been historically. The engineering is relatively opaque and > secretive, as is the underlying cost structure. Furthermore, PBX > systems have always been a business-focused product whose value lies > almost exclusively in its being a capital good. PC hardware is a > mass-market product for all sorts of consumers, and attempts to mark it > up in business target markets are predicated on additional value-added > characteristics (support, service, perception of higher quality, etc.). > Otherwise, they're still anchored to that underlying transparency of > cost structure. > > -- 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 >
So to sum up Alex's very long winded explanation. It is the "status quo" that Jay called BS. I guess some people are not ready for the paradigm shift or they were and now want to shift if back. Thanks, Steve Totaro _______________________________________________ --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