Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!mcnc!uvaarpa!virginia!kesmai!dca From: dca@kesmai.COM (David C. Albrecht) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Wish I had an Amiga 1500 Message-ID: <222@kesmai.COM> Date: 14 Jul 89 05:17:33 GMT References: <20219@cup.portal.com> <42606@bbn.COM> Organization: Kesmai Corporation, Charlottesville, VA Lines: 58 In article <42606@bbn.COM>, denbeste@bbn.com (Steven Den Beste) writes: > > If GM spends $10,000 redesigning a car to eliminate 3 5-cent screws, GM makes > money. True, but we're talking about redesigning most of the car here, not changing the hub cabs. New circuit board, new cabinet, is a pretty substantial deal not just a few screws. Even GM probably has to sell quite a few cars before they recoup the cost of a substantially remodelled car. > > Per-unit costs are a straight additive to the cost-of-sales. All the costs Mike > Farren cites are one-time costs which are amortized over the total > manufacturing life of the product. Since at least 500,000 A500's have been > built, the amortized cost of these things (except the support) is almost > neglible on a per-unit basis. (Probably less than a dollar.) > > But the cost savings of the smaller, less expensive supply, the easier, less > possibly more, from the cost-of-sales. Perhaps, but so what? For this idea to have any merit it must meet a few basic criteria. a) It must substantially increase the number of Amigas sold and/or increase Commodore's margins by allowing them to make more money per box. We've already lost (how many?) managers because they are unhappy U.S. sales of the Amiga. Spending money on a box that does nothing to increase the market is a pretty poor move. Trading 1500 sales for 2000 sales or 500 sales is not going to cut it. b) It cannot add a trickle of sales to the top end of the market (the 2000s) when the low end of the market is the bulk of sales (500). c) It cannot piss off the dealer network at the plethora of machines they need stock just to carry a line which is only a middling seller. d) The income it brings in must not only offset engineering and tooling for production expenses but, also the cost of a separate production line which is operated to produce the machine in addition to that of the 2000 and 500. Given that discounted there is roughly a $700 price differential between the 500 (with the A501) and the 2000 I can agree that there are probably many people that might have bought a machine that fell between these extremes rather than the 500 or the 2000. The crux, however, is not whether the desire for such a machine exists but if such a machine will bring in new customers. I think not. In my opinion, the Amiga's problems are those of customer awareness, dealer network size, and the upstream fight against the PCs dominance of the marketplace (and the speed at which the PC marketplace moves given the tremendous volume). I suspect that 98% of those who so desperately desire the A1500 will spend the extra bucks for the 2000 or sigh and settle for the 500. Try to realise what you want (because it saves you money) and what makes good business sense aren't necessarily one and the same. As an aside, I do kind of wonder why Commodore didn't at least put PC traces in on the 2000 motherboard so you could put in connectors ala. the AT slots and use all of the slots for Amiga cards if you wanted to get crazy with a soldering iron. David Albrecht