Russ Tyndall wrote: > It sounds like you are saying: the price should be high *now* > because there is no competition. > > And that later, we can expect lower prices because more plugin > developers will show up and force market prices down. > > Interesting theory.
Ding, ding, ding! Nothing what I described is new, but basic economics. Why shouldn't 3rd party developers charge what their products are worth? Look at our favorite company's products like the iPod and the iPhone. It is easier to lower prices than to raise prices. Apple wants to maximize its profits and will lower its prices in response to competition if it needs to. > By all means, they should charge a price that maximizes their > profit. What makes you think they haven't? > > If they weren't moving enough units, wouldn't they lower the > price? And if they were moving too many (more than they could > support), wouldn't they raise the price? > > Ultimately, we don't get to put the price where we *wish* it > should be. You are thinking backwards about this (BTW, I think it is safe to say you can't move to many units). Vendors desire to maximize profits and lowing prices in this market will not increase demand since they at the low end already (they have nowhere to go but up)! It makes no sense to lower prices if you have no competition to worry about, thus my suggestion to 3rd party developers to raise their prices and make the 3rd party market more viable to work in. In the case of the FTC I have set the price where it is because I have no competition (including WordGuise which BTW is more expensive than the FTC). Charging one tenth the price will not give me a ten fold increase in customers and would be disastrous for that revenue stream and thus puts future support at risk. Charging the appropriate price means I can continue supporting it properly. Bottom line, developers like MBS and Einhugur are in the driver's seat and can set the price they want since they are not competing against any one. With these posts I am trying to reshape the expectations of the RB community to be more realistic since they have had such an "extremely" low cost ride so far and if they want the RB environment to be the best it can be, it takes investment. As they say, there ain't no free lunch. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
