Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!intercon!news
From: kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: UUCP and NEWS on the Mac
Message-ID: <27232B25.1D87@intercon.com>
Date: 22 Oct 90 17:23:49 GMT
References: <9350002@hp-ptp.HP.COM> <1990Oct11.202517.23699@oswego.Oswego.EDU> <3433@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1990Oct19.205526.19190@pmafire.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent)
Reply-To: kdb@macaw.intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Herndon, VA
Lines: 33

In article <1990Oct19.205526.19190@pmafire.UUCP>, geoff@pmafire.UUCP (Geoff
Allen) writes:
> Yeah.  Seems to me that there's a *much* smaller market for this than
> for, say, CompuServe Navigator, and I doubt how many copies of Navigator
> you'd sell at $395 list.

Well, I guess that is what happens when you look at things from the University
outlook.  Not, mind you, that I am saying that looking at things that way
is bad.

We sell a $495 TCP/IP product (we also have $195 and $295 versions) commercially,
and we sell a fair number of them, enough that we can support 6-8 people
and their eating habits. :-)  Support does not come cheap, no one works for
peanuts, companies are set up to make money.  These are just a few of the
things that end up creating a "high" list price for software.  It also might
be pointed out that most, if not all, companies offer reasonable educational
discounts, I know we do.

Today, it is a much smaller market than say Navigator (ugly though it is).
That is yet another reason that this type of software costs more.  If I could
sell +1 million copies of my package I could price it for much less than
$495.  But the market is not that large right now, it is growing, but there
is no where near 1 million Macs on networks right now...  So...

Any price you pick for software is going to loose some people from your potential
client list.  Unfortunatly when the market is small to begin with you end
up having to charge more, or not bother even getting into the market.  I
say good luck to these guys (if there is more than one :-)).

--
Kurt Baumann                       InterCon Systems Corporation
703.709.9890                      Creators of fine TCP/IP products
703.709.9896 FAX               for the Macintosh.