James Sparenberg schrieb am Tue, 16 Sep 2003 21:29:32 -0700: > > Are people downloading to save money, or, are they downloading just to > get the product. No I don't have all the data, Gael has more. But, > the 20% drop in sales is consistent with the drop other software > vendors and retailers are seeing across the board. My next question > is. Why aren't SuSE, Red Hat, Walnut Creek (FreeBSD) Wasabi (NetBSD) > and others cutting back on retail? They sell to the same demographic. > Shouldn't they have similar problems?
Who says, they don't? But they have had (still have) other distribution strategies and means than Mandrake from the start. Mandrake always offered the download edition before the boxed sets. All others (I don't know about BSD, so I leave those out) always had the boxed sets in the shops first. So their strategy is mainly based on selling boxes. Mandrake's business model is based on the "Street Performer" model. Now I don't want to go into a discussion of this! As said before, all other ditributors also suffer from the 20% drop in sales. But they can't re-organize their strategy so fast because customers are used to find boxes on shelves and wouldn't change habits that fast. For Mandrake it is no change. Production and distribution of boxes is a very cost consuming thing which is not very becoming to a company with a tight budget. So Mandrake is IMHO just doing what they had to do. wobo
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