On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 00:42 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2006 at 10:51:43PM -0800, Dan Kegel wrote:
> > > Maybe the right question to ask is not what's hindering Autodesk,
> > > etc. but rather what other companies are struggling in their markets and
> > > are desperate for any marketshare at all, and then ask what *they* need
> > > in order to port to Linux?
> >
> > Indeed. Developers, developers, developers, developers! Let's
> > find out what the little developers need, and give it to them!
> > The big ones will follow.
>
> I did a bit of brainstorming on questions I would imagine little ISVs
> might have. What do you think?
>
>
> Business Issues
> What benefits of desktop Linux are my customers interested in?
>
The one business issue that is going to be hard to overcome
for the general market is the vast differences in market segment
sizes.
Lets use the numbers of
90% Windows
5% Mac
5% Linux
Now the Mac market segment is a little different in that it
used to be a much higher percentage and for certain usage
models I would imagine that it is the 90% and MS is the smaller
number.
So if you are looking to enhance the revenue for your product
you look at the relative sizes of the market segments for a given
industry if the above numbers are close then which ports do you
support?
Well if you assume that you can gain the same penetration
in each of the different desktop environments then the numbers
tell you. Let's say that you feel that you can quickly capture 10%
of a given application segment.
So doing the calculations you get a total of the desktop
market segment for each type of desktop of:
9% (MS Windows)
.5% (Mac)
.5 % (Linux)
======
10% total
Now you decide that instead of doing an additional
port (including support and proofing and ...) you could add
features that could change your market penetration from
10% to 11%.
The numbers become (I'm dropping Linux as a port)
9.9% (MS Windows)
.55% (Mac)
=======
10.45 % Total
The numbers tell you which way to go. :-(
So how do you overcome this? Well there are a couple of ways.
The first like Apple and have an application market segment
that is dominated by your OS. (Graphics arts)
The second is to bring up your numbers by having the
desktop % increase in places where you don't need the additional
applications. MS did a great job of this when they got people
to put in PC's instead of terminals. This greatly increased the
market segment share for Windows and made it the obvious
choice for the first port even though a great % of the systems
were being used as fixed function terminals.
- Just had to point this out.
wookie
> How do I measure the Linux marketshare for my industry?
>
> What are some examples of large customers looking to acquire commercial
> software on Linux?
>
> My application will not be available as Open Source. Can I still expect
> there to be enough customers for a Linux port of it?
>
> I am considering Open Sourcing the Linux version of my
> application. What issues should I be aware of?
>
> I need to estimate the effort needed to do a Linux port. What
> information is available to help me do this?
>
> Technical Issues
> What sorts of technical issues should I be aware of when porting my
> application to Linux?
>
> How do I decide which desktop environment and widget set to use for the
> Linux port of my company's application?
>
> What approaches are other ISVs using to distribute their software? How
> can I make one package that runs on all versions of Linux?
>
> How do I make my application fit in seamlessly with others the user
> will have installed on their desktop?
>
>
> Bryce
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