The question keeps coming up in different ways about whether and when Flex Radio is going to stop improving PowerSDR and essentially abandon the currently shipping hardware line. These recurring questions suggest that some proportion of the subscribers to the two lists have an inadequate understanding of how products are marketed. I'm going to attempt to characterize the market realities that argue persuasively against dumping the present hardware and ceasing development on PowerSDR. My hope is to allay the fears of those who keep raising these questions as much as is possible absent a definitive, comprehensive, and probably impractical guarantee from Gerald Youngblood, whom I obviously do not speak for.
The United States is, or at least has been for most of the modern age, the largest single market for electronics devices. It is natural that manufacturers have adapted their approach to markets to accommodate the US marketing approach which implements a method of segmenting a market around the concept of 'price points'. Simply stated a price point is established for a product that is characterized by a set of features and benefits for which it is assumed a consumer will be willing to pay a certain price. Multiple price points for the same kind of device exist such that a family of products is designed and manufactured with increasingly desirable features as the price increases. In the case of Flex Radio there are presently three price points being addressed by their shipping products, ranging from the 1500 at the bottom to the 5000 at the top. It could be persuasively argued that at each of these price points the Flex Radio offering is the best of the products offered by all manufacturers participating in that market at that price point. The only thing that keeps these products from being run away winners in the market place is consumer fear and aversion to change. It took a generation for the horse and buggy to disappear after Henry Ford found a way to make the horseless carriage affordable. Those of us who have purchased and used Flex Radios would, for the most part, not even consider going back to the old way. Those who have not tried may not change during their lifetimes or may simply not have been presented with an opportunity to understand why the new way is so much better. Price points generally do not change over time but feature creep provides increasingly better devices for the same price as the years go by. Since the currently shipping Flex products are considerably superior to the competition it is almost certain they will continue to sell well in each of their price points. Their development costs and market risks have all been absorbed and now they are reaping the benefits of better profit margins due to the lower costs associated with maturing products. To stop making and supporting them now when they are at the point of maximizing profit would be a completely irrational act. I have spoken to Gerald a number of times over the past 7 years or so. He is not only a quite exceptional engineer but a very successful business man (he had a fine career before retiring and then fiddling with SDR). He is not the least bit irrational. No one making analog radios can compete on price with Flex Radio for the current product line. They enjoy the enviable position of having the best market entry in each of their three price points and, I suspect the greatest price flexibility (now) if it becomes necessary to defend themselves. Worries about them abandoning the 1500 3000 or 5000 are simply not justified. If I needed another 5000 I would not hesitate a picosecond to order one. As for PowerSDR. "The software is the radio" is frequently heard. The reason it is oft repeated is that it is the truth. The current hardware can be a cash cow for years, but not for a minute after users perceive that development is being seriously curtailed on PowerSDR. I am sure it grates on Gerald that a number of copycats are getting a free ride off PowerSDR. However he can't do away with it (unless he comes up with a replacement that won't work on the copycats) without shooting himself in the foot. (See my reference above to him not being irrational.) There is the further consideration that PowerSDR is Open Source software. If Flex Radio were to burn to the ground tonight, taking with it all the developers and support people (God forbid), the rest of us would not be left in the lurch. Hundreds of copies of the source exist in the hands of users. It would take a while for us to organize to carry on, but carry on we would. This would not require any invention or anything otherwise speculative. The Open Source model of development and support goes all the way back to 1955 with the founding of SHARE, Inc. The disaster to Flex and its staff would hurt us all as people but would only be an inconvenience technically. Those who are concerned that little work will be done on PowerSDR have little to fear. If FRS were to functionally stabilize PowerSDR, that is, continue support for current features but not offer any improvement, the user community would simple carry on. Much of the code in that software was done by volunteers who are not now nor ever were employees of Flex Radio but were working on a common dream. This is a characteristic of the Open Source world and would apply as much to our circumstance as it does to thousands of other free software 'products'. As for concerns that some of what customers thought they were promised (I say it that way because comments made by people on the reflectors do not necessarily constitute promises made by FRS, but let's not get hung up on that) I believe that Gerald will not stomach the idea of functional stabilization as long as the real promises are unmet. He is one of the most highly principled men I have met. Now contemplate a day when all the original objectives of the Flex line have plainly been accomplished. If the software were stabilized at that point would you be any worse off than you would be 5 minutes after you bought an analog radio? No you wouldn't, but you would have a radio with dozens of new features that crept in during the active lifetime of PowerSDR. So how did you lose? I hope this helps some. 73 Ed Haskell W1PN _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software.
