i don't agree that the poster whose friend does everything for free is lost money to logitech. thats the wrong way to look at it from a business pov.
why? b/c logitech needed to develop all that software anyway, for the actual hardware customers it did have. making it available for free actually INCREASES hardware sales, it doesn't decrease sales. it increases exposure, and i'd bet a lot of people who try, eventually go on to buy. even if u believe more people don't buy then eventually do, whatever the numbers are, you get more sales total! the '20 persons into digital audio' scenario: 1. NO FREE SOFTWARE: 10 people buy without trying. 10 more people can't try and don't buy, end of story. (and since they couldn't try first, maybe some return hating it, costing logitech money) 2. FREE SOFTWARE: 10 people buy, (and maybe they tried first, maybe not) 3 people don't try, don't buy however 7 people try, and of those some use indefinitely, (your friend); and over time, some buy, lets say 3 of the 7 as of a given date. so: the free scenario gets you 3 more sales than the non free one, and there is no reason to believe net sales are hurt by the free scenario since customers could return stuff if they didn't like it in either case. the caveat of course is that the free scenario will turn potential customers off b/c they hate the software/paradigm, which i am sure has happened, but that only saves logitech from a costly return after the fact in a non-free scenario, so its good for logitech ultimately. the larger point is that with something like this, allowing people to use it, even only in part, should net more sales than not allowing them to do so. if your friends financial status were to change, i'd be expecting he'd buy something. having said that, i do agree that its odd to me, considering that they have SP, that they haven't developed apps for iphones and smart devices and so on. that truly is a huge missed opportunity and guys like pippin were very smart to move quick into the void. the SBC is amazing imo, but who would pay $299 for it when for $9 you can ipeng? there is no doubt imo, that logitech did not properly leverage the asset of SP in the smart devices category. -- MrSinatra www.lion-radio.org using: sb2 & sbc (my home) / sbrec & ipeng (parent's home) - sbs 7.5.2b - win xp pro sp3 ie8 - p4(ht) 3.2ghz, 2gig ram - 1tb wd usb2 raid1 - d-link dir-655 - 43k+ mp3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MrSinatra's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2336 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=80169 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
