Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake)

[Joachim Durchholz <joachim.durchholz@munich.netsurf.de>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Ell said
> 
> <<No it isn't.  You can win with an inferior product due to other
> factors.
> The overwhelming evidence of which some refuse to accept.>>
> 
> No you can't win with an inferior product, winning or success with
> products
> is how superiority is measured.
> 
> The trouble is that technical people tend to think that wizz-bang
> technical
> features are what is important.

Still there are cases where an inferior product wins.
1) When what the consumer perceives as superior is actually inferior,
but the consumer doesn't notice before buying it. (Instability and
configuration hassles of Windows 3.x vs. Macintosh)
2) When what the consumer perceives as inferior never hits the market
because the market entry costs are too high, so the superior product can
never prove its quality. (MS-DOS vs. Eumel)
3) When a product is superior for a large partial market but inferior
for many niches, but the niche markets are too small to support a
separate development effort.
4) Customers don't know about better alternatives because the
alternatives are restriced to niches. (Windows NT vs. QNX)

Classical market theories don't work too well in practice, and they work
even less than that for software, for two reasons:
1) Compared to other products, software production costs have an unusual
structure:
Market entry (creating the software to be sold) is exceedingly high.
Production cost (copying the software for distribution) is near zero.
Distribution and marketing costs seem to be about normal.
The usual market theories assume products where the production cost is
relevant (to the least).
2) Software products are highly interdependent (or can easily be made
so). A market leader can improve his position by making his software
incompatible with products from other vendors, locking the customers
into his software zoo. (IBM did and does this, Microsoft started this no
long ago.)

> I saw an interview with one of the guys from the MIT Media lab a few
> years
> ago, saying that he thought that HDTV was completely mis-directed. His
> question: "Ask someone on the street what is wrong with TV, they will
> not
> say 'lack of definition'". I always remember this, because I thought
> it
> was an excellent lesson in not focussing on technical excellence.

Hmm... HDTV is what we'll get here in Europe. I remember there was some
conflict between European and US industries about which standard to use.
Don't tell me it has anything to do with the customers' desires - it's
more a question which company with what invention has its main sales
areas where.

Regards,
Joachim
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