At 06:31 AM 12/31/2001 -0500, you wrote: >It just seems funny that with things like automobiles, fashion, music, food, >etc. that once a product is slightly old or outdated, they do not make it >disappear, but rather sell at good discounts... certainly would like to see >that common prevailing mentality that exists everywhere else apply to >software...
All the things you list are hard goods. They are physical things that are in inventory. Professional Software is Intellectual Property, not a package that sits on the shelf in Fry's. If you have a ton of fish that you caught and it is starting to smell, you have to sell it or you lose the money you spent catching it. Software isn't that way. We don't sit on thousands of boxes of CF in Ohio and send them out as we go. When we have a new version, there is NO old stock. If car manufacturers could work it out so that there was NONE of the previous models on car lots when they bring out the new lines, you can bet they would. Same with food. If you have a restaurant and buy beef, you really want to sell it the day you buy it and not offer it as a stew the next day. When PolyGram has 10,000 Eagles albums that didn't sell, they have to sell them as super values. It just is not the same as pro software. (Games of course are exactly like the consumer products you mention.) FWIW, not to be mean but, I have been in this business, on the software producer side, for 13 years and it always amuses me when someone suggest we run our business like an automobile company. You want something that takes years to produce, is created by union labor, depends on hundreds of external parts, requires massive government intervention and oversight, has a staff of 50% suits, and has a profit margin of 5%? That is just not sustainable. _________________________________________________________ Matt Brown Community Manager Macromedia (650) 481-4525 [EMAIL PROTECTED] FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
