Microsoft office rental is a very expensive proposition. I suspect that the tablet craze will make people dependent on some now-free cloud that will be able to extract serious rents.
Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael dot perelman at gmail.com Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of JOANNA A. Sent: Saturday, June 22, 2013 6:31 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Pen-l] Rents I am not an economics expert by any means, but a friend told me the following story. I cannot divulge the names on a public list because I do not want to get him or me in trouble. He is highly placed at a software company that has pretty much a monopoly in its area of expertise. Lately the people running this corporation have decided to go to a rent model. They have not done this because it's popular with their customers. Their customers hate the idea, and many of them face significantly higher costs from renting than buying. The programmers are not happy with this either because for the most part programmers don't like the idea of screwing over the people who use their software. But compensation/bonuses for the mucky mucks at the company depend on the reliablity of revenue streams which, of course, would rise with the rental model. (So it's not really about greater profits overall.) The customers can't go buy someone else's software because no one else offers a competitive product. So they're stuck. I don't know how widely applicable this scenario is, but thought it might provide some real/current data related to this topic. Doug: this might be an interesting topic for a radio show. Joanna
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