[comp.lang.pascal] Borland fee for TP 4.0

brad@looking.UUCP (11/20/87)

In article <2140@killer.UUCP> dons@killer.UUCP (Don Simoneaux) writes:
>Borland has spoiled us with their low list prices, so that the relative
>cost of the upgrade seems high?  Still, when I know that Soft Warehouse
>in Dallas will probably be selling TP 4.0 for $55, $40 for an upgrade 
>seems high.  But then it probably is of comparable worth to MASM.

It's quite simple.  A $99 product sells to a major distributor for $40.
The upgrade is available only direct for Borland.

Borland has (if you haven't noticed the prices of their other products)
realized that they were crazy to sell things for $50 in the old days.

With TP 4.0 it's even worse.  How many *new* customers can they expect
for this product?  Turbo Pascal 2 & 3 sold so well because they got anybody
remotely interested in Pascal to buy one.  They got Microsoft to give up the
race.  The best they can do with non-customers is win over a few diehards who
refused to use a Pascal without linking and a few other features.  Being
faster won't help, they already won over all the speed demons.

So with TP 4.0, they're faced with getting few new customers.  To make money,
they have to make the same from an upgrade as they do from a retail sale.

Somebody once told me that they thought Borland made money on cheap software
because all the "real" customers (instead of the "I'll try it" customers)
bought TP 1.0, TP 2.0, TP 3.0, TP toolbox, TP graphics, etc. etc.  From
the serious customers, they got as much money as the guy selling the $300
system.  From the experimenter, they got money nobody else was getting.

Nothing has changed, except the way it's being presented.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473