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From: knrgroup@garnet.berkeley.edu (Raymond group)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Not another NeXT defector???!!!
Message-ID: <1990Nov5.184802.28754@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 5 Nov 90 18:48:02 GMT
References: <1990Nov5.042826.28732@world.std.com> <1990Nov5.064724.16646@agate.berkeley.edu> <9530@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
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wilkins@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Mark Wilkins) writes:
> 15,000 * 6 = 90,000 machines per year.  Macintosh, in its FIRST year, sold
>500,000, and it was NOT an overwhelmingly popular machine.  It was seen as
>making very little headway into business and only a little more into 
>academia.

You would compare sales of Mercedes to Toyotas.  The NeXT is a workstation,
not a low or middle-range PC.  Sun, by all accounts a great success, sells 
in the order of 100,000 workstations a year.  Compare NeXT sales to machines
it is competing against, like the Mac IIfx, Sun, HP, etc.  By your argument,
Cray is a dismal failure because they sell less supercomputers than
IBM sells mainframes.  

Mark Wilkins continues:
>If NeXT had sold TEN TIMES as many machines, they'd be doing well.  If NeXT
>had sold FIVE TIMES as many machines, it would be tough for them.  At only
>7,500 per month it will still be a bitter fight for survival.

If NeXT sold TEN TIMES as much (i.e, 75,000 machines a MONTH), it would have
100% of the workstation market and a very large share of the high-end PC
market.  If NeXT sold FIVE TIMES as much, it would leapfrog Sun and the Mac
IIfx.  At 7,500 per month, NeXT is competing head-to-head with Sun and the
Mac II.  

Mark Wilkins also writes:
> When NeXT has an installed base of 1,000,000 is when I'm laying my money
>on the line.  Not a minute before.

When NeXT has a million in its installed base, it will have about half of
its target market.  The lower-end Macs are out there in the millions, but
has probably less than 25% of the market.  Once again, the NeXT is not a
PC.  It is aimed at a different audience, and you must measure its success
by how well it does against other machines aimed at the same audience.

Saying all this, I have to add that a NeXT is now a better buy than a Mac 
SE/30, Mac II, IIci, IIcx, IIfx, et al.  Sales of NeXTs will grow even 
further as the NeXT begins to incur into the mid-range Mac and high-end
PC market.  

Now is the time to become a software developer for the NeXT.  When your
product is finished, the NeXT will have a large installed base.