denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) (05/30/87)
This is an attempt to describe and analyze all the markets which the Amiga
could conceivably be sold to:
Business:
The business marketplace is well described by two words: "timidity" and
"inertia". The problem that any innovater in a business has is that if
he proposes a radical idea and moves heaven and earth to get it into
place, two things can happen: It might succeed, in which case his boss
will take credit, or it might fail, in which case he himself gets the
blame. So why try? That is why two things happen: any tool takes a long
time to get established, but once it does it takes on a life of its own.
Computerland still makes a bundle selling XT's because it is known and
trusted and understood. It's obsolete, too, but who cares about that?
I see this market breaking three ways:
Secretary's desk - First there was the manual typewriter, then the
electric typewriter, then the auto-correcting electric, then the
Wang (a trademark) word processor which was better but very expensive.
All those typewriters came from IBM, so when IBM finally decided
to sell computers in this market, the business world breathed a
collective sigh of relief and went back to a manufacturer they trusted.
Important questions asked by people in this market:
1. Does it work reliably?
2. Will the manufacturer be around tomorrow?
3. Who will repair it when it breaks, and how long will they take?
4. When they repair it, will it stay repaired?
5. Is there any way that this is risky?
Strange as it may sound, price is not a consideration in this market.
Any solution under perhaps $4000 is acceptable.
As far as I can tell right now, this market is split between the PC and
the MAC. I would hate to try to guess proportions, but I suspect that
the PC has a substantial edge - because it is less risky, and for no
other reason. There is a truism: "Nobody ever got fired for recommending
purchase of IBM equipment." I think the Amiga has no prayer of
penetrating this market: Commodore is an unknown quanitity, it is thus
a very risky proposition to use the Amiga, repair service isn't
sufficiently easy or fast, and it doesn't have any commensurate
advantages to outweigh these drawbacks.
Manager's desk - Sometime after the secretaries began to have computers
on their desks, their bosses noticed them and decided they couldn't
live without them. This began in the accounting market with a guy who
decided he had to do spreadsheets, and spread from there. As best
I've been able to observe, only three kinds of programs run on this
machine: Spreadsheet, Scheduling aid (PERT or equivalent), Word
processor (yes, because many managers are finding that it is easier
and faster to type a letter than to dictate it; but they do so in
rough form, then give a disk to their secretary, who cleans it up
and prints it - which means they have to have the same computer, and
here lies the heart of some savvy marketting campaigns...). Essentially
the same questions are asked here as for the secretary, and for
the same reasons the Amiga probably hasn't got a prayer. I'd like to
take this opportunity to emphasize that technical excellence doesn't
mean a damn thing in this market, nor does price matter much. Again,
IBM mostly owns this market. In fact, the PC was designed for
precisely this market.
Executive "badge" - Once the lower level managers in the company start
having computers on their desks, it became a corporate badge, like
the floor your office was on, or the number of secretaries passed to
reach that office, or how many windows it had, or whether you had a
reserved parking place. This computer is in the office to be seen,
not to be used. Snob appeal is the key here. The more expensive the
computer the better (up to a point - then it becomes conspicuous
consumption and is a bit gauche). Also, though, it has to be
extremely easy to understand and learn for someone who doesn't
know very much about computers. The PC-AT has this market cold, and
much as I despise MS-DOS, it is an almost ideal operating system for
people like this (or the other managers). For all its faults, it is
easy to learn and understand. This guy doesn't need the power of an
AT, but that has nothing to do with anything. Amiga hasn't got a
prayer here except with mavericks - it hasn't got any snob appeal.
Only name brands matter - it is a symbol and must be recognized as
such. (By the way, portables have made significant inroads in this
market... the proof is that IBM finally broke down and started selling
one.)
Engineering development workstation: This market consists of trying to
replace all the terminals which are hooked with central computers with
individual computers on each engineer's desk. Main competitors in this
market are Apollo and Sun, with Metheus, Mentor, Tektronix and (sigh)
IBM also trying to get into it. I've heard that right now Sun dominates
it and I've heard that they deserve to. Three kinds desks are of
concern here:
SW - Snob appeal plays very little in this decision. Instead, the
questions run more like this: What tools are available for it
(including big-time stuff like networking, cross-assemblers and
cross-compilers)? How reliable is it? How easy is its use? How good
is its documentation? Who repairs it and how long do they take?
How likely is it that the company will surivive? Networking is
essential here, as is a built-in hard disk and some way of doing
regular and reliable backups of it.
HW - HW guys are almost as knowledgeable about software and tools
as SW guys, but the tools they need are much different: circuit
CAD, circuit simulators, auto-layout programs - these are heavy duty
number-crunching programs, so to a much greater extent than SW guys
they will be concerned about MIPS count. They also need hard disks
backup, and perhaps networking (though it is less important). Also
interface to plotters is vital.
ME - I don't understand this market very well, so the following are
guesses: Architectural and mechanical CAD packages are necessary,
as well as interface to plotters and relative ease of use - but these
people are not fools and don't need an oatmeal operating system.
They need power and are willing to make concessions to get it.
Global comments: Price is a critical issue here: NO engineering group ever
has as large a capital budget as it would like, but their needs in
instrument-count is constant, so the cheaper, the closer they can
come to buying all they need. However, price is the means by which they
will decide among products satisfying the other criteria. They will not
buy something that doesn't solve their problem no matter how cheap.
A1000 loses out here: no networking and no hard disk. A2000 may just
barely squeeze in if someone writes the software - then folks who don't
need networking may consider it. I consider this an outside possibility;
Commodore just doesn't have the reputation that it needs;
"You want us to buy our development tools from a maker of Video Games???"
Lab automation: There are a heck of a lot of small, medium or large
laboratories in this country, and they spend a lot of money on
equipment, almost all of which comes with IEEE-488 interfaces (GPIB
to old-timers like me), and for obvious reasons they'd like to
control all of them with a computer and analyze the results with
it. There are some computers designed for this purpose specifically,
and I would guess that right now Hewlett Packard dominates this area.
No computer without a GPIB interface would even be considered.
Factory automation: How many of you can say "Relay Ladder Logic"?
Originally factory automation was with relays. You think the business
world is conservative? The computers that they use now for this job
literally present the system as a series of simulated relays, which
the electrician connects as if they were real, in order to get the
performance he asked for. The computer presenting this morass
goes through heroic transformations to turn it into something it knows
how to handle. Amiga in this market? Forget it.
Broadcasting: Radio broadcasting isn't any different from any other
business as far as the Amiga is concerned, but TV? That's another matter.
Anybody want to compete with Grass Valley Group? Incredibly reliable,
very powerful and grossly expensive. The potential exists here to
put the Amiga in at the low end creating graphics for TV news or sports.
I'm afraid that the Amiga's graphics, nice as they are, may still not
be quite up to it. First off, you gotta dispense with those guard-bands
on the side of the screen (I think I've heard that the latest DPAINT
can do this - I know that the version of IMAGES I've got can't).
You've got to generate NTSC standard graphics - and that means interlace.
I suspect that only the 640*400 (plus guardband area) mode is good enough,
and then the question is "Are 16 colors sufficient?" Maybe for the
low end, no way for the high end. In any case, a heck of a lot of good
software would be needed, and it wouldn't be cheap to purchase since it
probably would only sell a few hundred copies...
Education: Even as I write this the sight of a computer in a class room
is as common as the sight of a movie projector (maybe more - I bet they
are replacing the projectors with VCRs). They are really used for two
kinds of things: Teaching about computers, and teaching about everything.
The latter isn't a very well explored area for a variety of reasons (not
the least of which is that schools are notoriusly bad software pirates!)
but the Children's Television Workshop has done some good things for the
Coco. The first question and the last question asked when purchasing is "How
much does it cost?" The other question is "How much educational
software is available for it?" "How powerful is it?" isn't a consideration,
since if it is slow that means that a student waits (and a student's time
doesn't cost the school system anything). Frankly, Amiga should do very
poorly here - these folks buy things like Cocos and C64s!
Musicians: I don't pretend to understand this bunch. The impression I
have gotten is that the ST is doing better here than Amiga because it
has a built-in MIDI port and because the software support for Amiga
isn't very good, but I could be wrong. In any case this doesn't appear
to be a very large market, since musicians are notoriously poor.
Hobby: And then there are the people who buy computers for themselves,
just to play with:
high school students: Despite Commodore's ludicrous "If you don't buy
your kid a Vic-20 he'll grow up to be a rock musician" ad campaign,
the principle is becoming more and more true: A high school student
WILL do better in school if he or she owns a computer at home. Many
parents take this to heart, but having had experience with at least
one musical instrument which is now collecting dust in the closet,
$500 is probably the most you can expect such a parent to spend.
"Maybe later we'll buy something better, but for now let's get something
cheap and see if he likes it." Who do you think has been buying
all those C64's all these years?
adult self-education: Then there is the 50-year-old who has, all these
years, been afraid of automated bank tellers and whose image of computers
bears a strong resemblence to HAL, but buckles down and decides that,
by gum, he's really going to get a computer and try to learn what these
things do. His language of choice is Basic (when it isn't FORTH)
and his purchasing habits are all across the spectrum. NOBODY can
predict what this guy will buy, and it is a sufficiently nebulous
market group that I don't see how anyone could target it - but IBM
has given it a try. One reason is that there is substantial overlap
between this group and the "senior executive" group above, which is
why the "little tramp" image - easy, friendly, loving, nonintimidating.
("Everyman" uses the PC, easily, and solves his problem...)
Some of these guys are impressed with nifty-keens, and perhaps the
Amiga might penetrate with them, but this group is almost archetypally
cautious - name-brands win out here. Much as we'd like to believe
otherwise, Commodore isn't a name brand with most people - I bet
that fewer than 10% of the people have ever heard of them, compared
to (I bet) 75% or more for IBM.
technotoy freaks: You know who you are... fascinated by technical
innovation and unimpressed (or even negatively impressed) by big
names. I divide this group into two classes: Poor and Affluent.
The poor ones (or let's be charitable: "frugal ones") buy ST's,
the affluent ones (or to be uncharitable: "spendthrifts") buy
Amiga's. (The very-affluent-and-stupid buy Macs - but I can't conceive
why anyone in their right mind would buy a Mac for home use...)
I have just read an article asking why Amiga doesn't try for another
market nitch. As far as I can see, there just isn't another one that it
can compete in as it currently exists. There are a couple that the
A2000 might do slightly well in, but in each case it will be fighting
an uphill battle. The fabled A2000 IBM compatability is intended to give
them a prayer in the business market (which is larger than all the others
combined) - but they still have a massive problem penetrating the
inertia, with the risk-factor of the repair service they don't have
(compared to what IBM has, anyway, with on-site repair guaranteed within
24 hours). That kind of thing is worth twenty times what nifty-graphics is
or other such.
Most of the people I have seen here trying to redesign the Amiga to make
it commercially successful have concentrated on more nifty features - and
only the technotoy freaks care about that, and Commodore has already
saturated that market. What would you suggest they do (besides improving
their repair service up to the level of IBM's and what they've done for
the A2000)?
--
Steven Den Beste
Bolt Beranek & Newman, Cambridge MA
denbeste@bbn.com (ARPA or CSNET)
"The voice within the candle whispers of a timeless peace beyond." - Paul Wintersdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) (05/31/87)
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.1 of Thu Apr 9 1987 on linus (berkeley-unix) > Engineering development workstation: This market consists of trying to > replace all the terminals which are hooked with central computers with > individual computers on each engineer's desk. Main competitors in this > market are Apollo and Sun.... > A1000 loses out here: no networking and no hard disk. A2000 may just > barely squeeze in if someone writes the software - then folks who don't > need networking may consider it. I consider this an outside possibility; > Commodore just doesn't have the reputation that it needs; > "You want us to buy our development tools from a maker of Video Games???" Actually, I'm fairly confident that the Amiga, if properly marketed, *could* sell well as a low-end CAD/engineering workstation, a cheap alternative to Sun workstations. Hard disks, Ethernet, and NFS are available for Amiga 1000s, and the situation should be even better with A2000s. And Amiga graphics and speed would certainly be fast enough (esp. with a 68020 upgrade) to compete effectively with Suns as engineering workstations. But there are two more conditions I believe are necessary for Amiga to compete effectively in this area. 1. The graphics *must* be improved still further. A maximum noninterlaced resolution of 640 x 200 was neat for personal computers in 1985, but it's not enough to compete with Sun today. (Even IBM PC/AT's have add-on video boards that give better resolution than this!) If it were possible to get 1000 x 1000 resolution on the A2000, Commodore might then have a real winner in the engineering market. 2. AmigaDos has got to go. If Unix became available on A2000's, then engineering houses that have standardized on Unix workstations (like Suns) could simply hang Amigas and Suns interchangeably on the same Ethernet. The engineers wouldn't need to learn another (not as good) operating system; and the same CAD tools would run on both Amigas and Suns. Steven Litvintchouk MITRE Corporation Burlington Road Bedford, MA 01730 Fone: (617)271-7753 ARPA: sdl@mitre-bedford UUCP: ...{cbosgd,decvax,genrad,ll-xn,philabs,security,utzoo}!linus!sdl
page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (06/01/87)
sdl@linus.UUCP (Steven D. Litvintchouk) wrote: >A maximum noninterlaced resolution of 640 x 200 ... is not enough >to compete with Sun ... If it were possible to get 1000 x 1000 ... >Commodore might then have a real winner in the engineering market. Well, you need to remember cost. I favor a 640x400 (or a little more if you use MOREROWS) display, with a "superbitmap" window, so I can get 1k x 1k (or 2k x 2k even) and keep the cost down. Alas, I can say no more, except something exciting is happening, and the biggest complaint against the Amiga may soon become moot. Of course people can still complain about no MMU, right? ..Bob PS I don't have any connection with any company or product that you may have inferred that I was talking about here, OK? Ssshhhh... -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}
page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (06/01/87)
denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) wrote: >This is an attempt to describe and analyze all the markets which the Amiga >could conceivably be sold to: Wow! Somebody is really thinking about this? Too bad Steven is a little far north, I guess he doesn't work in West Chester... sigh. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}
jmpiazza@sunybcs.UUCP (Joseph M. Piazza) (06/01/87)
In article <1444@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM> denbeste@cc5.bbn.com.BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) writes: > ... I think the Amiga has no prayer of penetrating [the business] market: >Commodore is an unknown quanitity, it is thus a very risky proposition >to use the Amiga, repair service isn't sufficiently easy or fast, and >it doesn't have any commensurate advantages to outweigh these drawbacks. When speaking with a manager (or whatever) of a successful computer dealership who's main source of business is in field sales, he told me that he wouldn't touch Commodore systems ever since they got screwed when Commodore bailed out somehow in the calculator market -- after assuring dealerships that they wouldn't. Anyone have more details on this? Isn't this similar to what happened when Commodore dumped 64's to the K-Market? I would like to have more info on this subject. Anyone willing e-mail a brief but comprehensive history lesson? If there's sufficient interest, I'll summarize and post. The result is that many dealers (well, at least the one that I talked to) treat Commodore as a known quantity -- one that will leave you holding the wrong end of the stick. Flip side, joe piazza --- Cogito ergo equus sum. (Yes, Leo, it does mean "I think therefore I am a horse" -- but then again, maybe not -- I never studied Latin :-) CS Dept. SUNY at Buffalo 14260 (716) 636-3191, 3180 UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!jmpiazza CS: jmpiazza@buffalo-cs BI: jmpiazza@sunybcs GE: jmpiazza
kurt@doodah.UUCP (06/03/87)
Steven Den Beste writes: > > This is an attempt to describe and analyze all the markets which the Amiga > could conceivably be sold to: > > Broadcasting: Radio broadcasting isn't any different from any other > business as far as the Amiga is concerned, but TV? That's another matter. > Anybody want to compete with Grass Valley Group? Incredibly reliable, > very powerful and grossly expensive. The potential exists here to > put the Amiga in at the low end creating graphics for TV news or sports. > I'm afraid that the Amiga's graphics, nice as they are, may still not > be quite up to it. First off, you gotta dispense with those guard-bands > Everybody talks about TV, and I admit, the Amiga with its current capabilities and peripherals are not acceptable for broadcast, but there is a *huge* market in industrial video. These are the guys who make training tapes and the promo tapes you see at the home show. An Amiga can give these video productions a lot of class with a few well placed titles and animations. I know because I have a little business that does this. I run it out of my house in my off hours ( I work for Boeing during the day) and have more than paid for my two Amigas and all the gear and software. The animations are fun to make and business is good. If you look in the phone book you'll see lots of little video companies that can use this service/product. I also have a friend with a <$6K Midi studio. He makes elevator music to pay for his stuff. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of applications in the arts for Amigas, but people have to use their imaginations ( as well as good marketing ) and Commodore should try to spark that rather than compete in well-developed areas. I network Macs during the day and use them for a million things. I would never give up my Mac for an Amiga at the office, but the Amiga is also very special in it's own right. I might get a Mac II because of the 256 colors, but if CBM would come out with an 8-bit plane Amiga, I would certainly stick with Commodore. Amigas are wonderful -- isn't that enough? Kurt VanderSluis
kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) (06/07/87)
Steve,
Really excellent analysis, and right on the money. The answer to
your last question (whom should Commodore target) was implicit in
what you wrote, and is part of my guess that the A2000 won't do
nearly as well as the A1000.
Commodore should target the technofreaks, again! Instead of bringing
out compatibility with the outdated IBM PC (who cares - I wouldn't have
had one when they were new - no innovations!), and turning off the
technophiles, Commodore should have concentrated on a 68020/68881/mmu
true 32 bit machine, running 25 MHz with about 4 meg of memory
standard, better color (at least 780 x 512, and preferably 1024 x 780)
and more color (9 or 12 bit planes), better sound (12 bit resolution,
4 or 8 channel, faster sample rate, built in MIDI (why not use the
standard?)); a long persistance monitor so folks would stop bitching
about the flicker; SCSI built in so cheap hard disks could be had, and
a cleaned up operating system a bit closer to UNIX. If they could
have brought this in at $3000 or even $3500, most of us who bought the
A1000 would have been beating down the door to get in, and the
engineering workstation types would have been running roughshod over
our backs to beat us to the cash register.
Poor as I am, I really wasn't paying much attention to price when I
bought Amy, and I doubt the rest of the crowd was, either. Why do
you suppose that Commodore brought out an "upgrade" that ignored the
one market they had successfully penetrated?
Kent.
--
Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student // Yet
UUCP : kent@xanth.UUCP or ...{sun,harvard}!xanth!kent // Another
CSNET : kent@odu.csnet ARPA : kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu \\ // Happy
USPost: P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Virginia 23501-1559 \// Amigan!
Voice : (804) 587-7760 -=][> Last one to Ceres is a rotten egg! -=][>jrusso@topaz.rutgers.edu.UUCP (06/07/87)
In article <1180@xanth.UUCP> kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >Steve, > Really excellent analysis, and right on the money. The answer to I agree. It was quite good. But thats All I agree with here. > Commodore should target the technofreaks, again! Instead of bringing > out compatibility with the outdated IBM PC (who cares - I wouldn't have > had one when they were new - no innovations!), and turning off the > technophiles, Commodore should have concentrated on a 68020/68881/mmu > true 32 bit machine, running 25 MHz with about 4 meg of memory [cut out lots of high price addition suggestions] > > Poor as I am, I really wasn't paying much attention to price when I > bought Amy, and I doubt the rest of the crowd was, either. Why do > you suppose that Commodore brought out an "upgrade" that ignored the > one market they had successfully penetrated? >Kent. First of all, I don't see the connection between adding options to a system and turning off the hacker market. They gave you an extra possibility to expand-whats wrong with that? I also despise IBM, but IBM compatibility will help sell to non techonophiles, and shouldn't turn off the techies either. I'm basically a hacker, but I work for a computer dealer who used to sell Amigas. But we don't anymore. Why? 1> Its not an IBM compatible-that makes it hard to sell to anyone but a hobbyist. And hobbyists dont spend lots of extra money for extras. 2> Not enough profit margin. When a dealer can sell an IBM clone for $800 with 5 minutes devoted to a sale, and make a 100% profit, the Amiga becomes undesirable to a dealer. It takes a lot more time to sell this computer where the profit marging is only around 20% for the going price. The Amiga 2000 has answered both these problems. Like it or not, IBM compatibility is the first thing the average buyer asks about for a computer - so it had better be at LEAST an option. And its got to have a good profit for a dealer. Its nice to be able to buy a good system cheaply, but not if noone sells it. But this has a limit. Adding all those great ideas of your is going to SEVERELY increase the price. Remember - if you add $1000 to dealer cost, you have to add $2000 to price - dealers want margins. Do you really believe that people will be willing to spend the prices that that would require? With dealer margins we're probably talking more than a MacII, which everyone already complains about pricewise. I dont know about the net at large, but out of around 20 or 30 local Amiga owners, I think one would have an AMiga if it cost that much- and it wouldn't be me. And out of the 11 Amigas I've sold, not one of them would have been sold with the configuration you suggest. >-- >Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student // Yet Mark Carroll Carroll@aim.rutgers.edu ** This has been cross posted by topaz!jrusso. Please don't send me the flames! **