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From: zerkle@iris.ucdavis.edu (Dan Zerkle)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Developers Read this Part III
Message-ID: <7779@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 8 Oct 90 23:43:58 GMT
References: <1407@winnie.fit.edu> <9878@pogo.WV.TEK.COM> <1990Sep30.090335.6765@news.iastate.edu>
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Reply-To: zerkle@iris.ucdavis.edu (Dan Zerkle)
Organization: U.C. Davis - Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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In article <9878@pogo.WV.TEK.COM> bluneski@pogo.WV.TEK.COM (Bob Luneski) writes
>[The]
>problem lies in the fact that there are simply not enough Amiga owners using
>the Amiga for the scientific applications you mentioned to warrant development
>in thses niche markets.

This sort of attitude entirely misses the point.  When you sell in
niche markets, you sell complete solutions.  Generally, what you do
(as a salesperson) is find some innocent group of scientists meekly
using obsolete equipment/software.  You then sell these people the
computer, the scientific hardware, and the software, all in one
package.  You then support them as much as you can, possibly charging
them for the service contract.  I am hardly an expert in the marketing
field, but I believe that this is known as "value added retailing" (I
could be wrong....).

In other words, when you are going to develop a package, the first
thing you do is figure out what your software/instruments are going to
do.  Then, you find the best hardware to run it on.  Your "niche
users" are going to use this hardware exclusively for the special
application (well, probably not really, but in theory).  They aren't
planning on using their existing hardware (again, an
overgeneralization).  It doesn't matter that "not enough" people use
brand-x computers.  You sell them those computers as part of the
package.

At least, that is how it is supposed to work.

             Dan Zerkle  zerkle@iris.ucdavis.edu  (916) 754-0240
           Amiga...  Because life is too short for boring computers.