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From: jrusso@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Amiga: A market analysis
Message-ID: <12498@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Sun, 7-Jun-87 14:53:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.12498
Posted: Sun Jun  7 14:53:17 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 8-Jun-87 03:56:07 EDT
References: <1444@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM> <1180@xanth.UUCP>
Reply-To: jrusso@topaz.rutgers.edu (Jim Russo star@gold)
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 54
Summary: Wrong!

In article <1180@xanth.UUCP> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>Steve,
>	Really excellent analysis, and right on the money.  The answer to
	I agree. It was quite good. But thats All I agree with here.
>	Commodore should target the technofreaks, again!  Instead of bringing
>	out compatibility with the outdated IBM PC (who cares - I wouldn't have
>	had one when they were new - no innovations!), and turning off the
>	technophiles, Commodore should 	have concentrated on a 68020/68881/mmu
>	true 32 bit machine, running 25 MHz with about 4 meg of memory
	[cut out lots of high price addition suggestions]
>	
>	Poor as I am, I really wasn't paying much attention to price when I
>	bought Amy, and I doubt the rest of the crowd was, either.  Why do
>	you suppose that Commodore brought out an "upgrade" that ignored the
>	one market they had successfully penetrated?
>Kent.
	First of all, I don't see the connection between adding options
to a system and turning off the hacker market. They gave you an extra
possibility to expand-whats wrong with that? I also despise IBM, but
IBM compatibility will help sell to non techonophiles, and shouldn't
turn off the techies either. I'm basically a hacker, but I work for
a computer dealer who used to sell Amigas. But we don't anymore. Why?
1> Its not an IBM compatible-that makes it hard to sell to anyone but
  a hobbyist. And hobbyists dont spend lots of extra money for extras.
2> Not enough profit margin. When a dealer can sell an IBM clone for $800
 with 5 minutes devoted to a sale, and make a 100% profit, the Amiga
 becomes undesirable to a dealer. It takes a lot more time to sell this
 computer where the profit marging is only around 20% for the going
 price.

	The Amiga 2000 has answered both these problems. Like it or not,
IBM compatibility is the first thing the average buyer asks about for
a computer - so it had better be at LEAST an option. And its got to
have a good profit for a dealer. Its nice to be able to buy a good
system cheaply, but not if noone sells it. But this has a limit. Adding
all those great ideas of your is going to SEVERELY increase the price.
Remember - if you add $1000 to dealer cost, you have to add $2000 to
price - dealers want margins. Do you really believe that people will be
willing to spend the prices that that would require? With dealer margins
we're probably talking more than a MacII, which everyone already complains
about pricewise. 

	I dont know about the net at large, but out of around 20 or 30
local Amiga owners, I think one would have an AMiga if it cost that much-
and it wouldn't be me. And out of the 11 Amigas I've sold, not one of them
would have been sold with the configuration you suggest.
>--
>Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student	 // Yet

	Mark Carroll
	Carroll@aim.rutgers.edu

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