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RE[2]: Dun' matter. - identical needs
by jabbotts on Fri 2nd Mar 2012 19:56 UTC in reply to "RE: Dun' matter."
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Why on earth would they offer one singular version? First of all, they don't have customers with identical needs. For people who need less, why wouldn't you offer those people a trimmed down version...

The "everybody has different needs" is a crap excuse. It's not rocket science to provide a custom install which lets the user choose only what applies to there different needs. This excuse belongs in the field scaring birds away from the crops.

Because in business you provide customers willing to pay more, something to pay more for.

Bingo. There's your huckleberry. The maximum that one can milk the market for. What price-point will carefully balance maximum profits with minimum buyer rejection. You make it sound like it's done for the benefit of the buyer though; "give them something to pay more for" as if we're looking for an excuse to hand over more of our earnings. Maybe government taxes are a privilege we can somehow increase?

I do get why it's done; profit spike pays for development cycle and finances short term help-desk support along with short term updates, units sold drops off so new version is announced with different coloured shiny lights to seem needed and new profit spike starts the cycle over again. Lest we forget corporate law which dictates that shareholder equity trump customer benefit in any decision.

For me the question is more about what happened to cost+reasonablemarket. Why does the market allow this to be cost+asmuchaswecantakeyoufor? Especially in the software market where all scarcity is artificial. Once development costs are paid back, your looking at 0 cost per unit plus 1$ for distribution media and packaging, less if you stick to digital distribution. They could easily make development costs back plus reasonable profits after that. But no, we need to pay $100+ for an OS. (and some thought 40$ for a Dos install was high markup)

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