Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!CCVAX.IASTATE.EDU!TAAB5 From: TAAB5@CCVAX.IASTATE.EDU (Marc Barrett) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: The Future of Commodore. Message-ID: Date: 9 Jan 91 06:45:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Lines: 61 From a previous message, quoting an article in the Wall Street Journal... Commodore Replaces Head Of U.S. Unit Commodore International has replaced the president of its U.S. subsidiary, Harold Copperman, with James Dionne, who most recently headed the company's Canadian unit. The computer maker also plans to lay off 10 percent to 15 percent of its 600-person U.S. work force in a reorganization designed to boost profit margins. (Wall Street Journal, 1/8/91, pg. B4) Commodore's problem is that all of the Commodore managers are only concerned with short-term profits. They are not at all concerned about long-term profits, or whether or not Commodore will even exist as a major company in the distant future. When Commodore announced that they had made only a tiny profit for the past year, and that Amiga sales were up but not to the levels that the management wanted, I started predicting that Copperman would be out by Spring. I was half right -- Copperman is still in the company, but is no longer as much of an influence that he was in the past. My reasoning then is that the management would not be happy that Copperman's company reforms and increased funding on research & development and marketing had not produced immediate results, and that he would be fired for it. In a way I was right: anybody but Copperman would have resigned rather than take a demotion. This is really too bad, but it falls right in line with what I've been predicting for a long time. Commodore's managers just do not know how to run a company with a long-range vision. They know only of short-term profits, and if the profits are low they get nervous and start cutting R&D and marketing. This is why Commodore has never had a long-running ad campaign, this is why Commodore has never spent more than 3% of total sales on R&D (in 1985-1988, they spent less than 2% of total sales on R&D), and this is why the Amiga is no longer the influence on the computer industry that it once was. Under Copperman, the company made some reforms, such as hiring more people for software and hardware R&D, but it looks like these reforms are going to be very quickly reversed. With 15% cut-backs in the staff at West Chester, it is likely that all of those people who have been hired from job noticed posted on CSA in the past year will be fired very soon. It also means that even the very minor increase amount of funding that Copperman has spent on R&D will be cut to again below 2%. What does this mean for the future? It means that the Amiga will decline in influence in the computer industry. Savor these times, because the Amiga is at it's peak today. From now on the Amiga will do nothing but decline. Commodore will cut research and development of Amiga hardware and software, seaking to improve short-term profits. Commodore will also likely spend even less on marketing than they are now (hard to imagine, really). AMIGA -- Yesterday's Technology, FOREVER!!! -MB-