Austin wrote:
On 09/24/2003 11:37:03 AM, Serge Pluess wrote:
9.0 and 9.1 boxes never hit the shelves here at the main stores such as Fry's Electronic, CompUSA or BestBuy. One day one lonely box of 8.2 was sitting at Fry's next to lots and lots of boxes of Redhat 9, Suse 8.2, and current versions of Lycoris, Lindows, FreeBSD and NetBSD.
I agree with this completely, and I have said so before.
In my opinion that is something that Mandrake needs to put more effort in in order to get themselves noticed with the mainstream public. I know of quite a few people that just pick up a box at any of these stores to try them out just for the fact that they are available there while they were pondering through the store.
Yeah... I don't know if it's a difference between European and American cosummerism or not, but I assure you, lots of (North) Americans would buy the box without prior planning... just because it's in front of them.
Austin
It seems to me the capital investment required to produce and distribute large international inventories of boxed sets is probably not within the current means of such a tightly-budgeted, government-auditted company, working to get back in the black. Proven, lower-overhead means of generating revenue are being employed, short-term, at least. In the 08/01/2003 Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter - Issue #82, there is a link to the MandrakeSoft Shareholder Newsletter, which contains the following:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/newsletter/sn030724
"For the first half year of the current fiscal year, MandrakeSoft's consolidated revenue decreased by 10% to 2.10 million euros over the same period of the previous year. This decrease is mainly due to the weakness of the US dollar, which is the main currency of MandrakeSoft's revenue. With last year's USD/euro exchange rate, consolidated revenue would have remained mostly stable (-2%).
Consolidated gross margins for the first half year increased by 24%. This significant increase reflects an important change in revenue sources:
# Increase in high margin revenue lines such as OEM, on-line sales and subscriptions to MandrakeLinux Users Club (from 40% to 63% of consolidated revenue),
# Decrease in retail sales (from 51% to 27% of consolidated revenue).
For the first half year of the current fiscal year, MandrakeSoft reported a consolidated operating loss of 1.27 million euros which is an improvement of 2.4 million euros compared to last year's same period. This improvement is mainly due to an increase in gross margin plus savings from the ongoing cost reduction plan."
Rolf
