Structure of the Software Industry (by alaric)
However, there is a definite commercial pressure for a company like Microsoft to bundle more and more stuff in their standard OS distribution, thus inevitably killing off competitors, thus removing any pressure for Microsoft to improve the bundled features, resulting in technological stagnation.
But a solution comes to mind: perhaps rival OS companies (eg, Apple) should look into bundling licenced copies of third party antivirus etc. products - but with contracts designed such that the third party vendors can compete for the bundling contract in each version?
It would still end up driving software prices down, since companies NOT chosen for the bundle contract will still have a hard time getting people to buy their product, even if it's better than the bundled one, but it would allow for a competitive market (producing innovation) while allowing OS vendors to compete on the number of bundled tools they have.
But IANAE - I Am Not An Economist.
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Thu 6th Oct 2005 12:23 pm 3 Comments
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By Charlee, Fri 7th Oct 2005 @ 5:26 pm
I agree. I don't like marketing, because I can't afford to do it for my business. We used to get customers on word of mouth. But thanks to a) marketing of PC World as actually being quality etc, and b) Government training schemes, we don't seem to get customers anymore. Who cares whether we are any good or not? We don't have a chain of stores, we don't have flashy marketing, and we're honest. So we're buggered.
By Alex B, Fri 7th Oct 2005 @ 10:09 pm
What have you to say about the "best product" being a per-person metric? AOL's marketing emphasises online safety, BT's emphasises a particular feature (music downloading), Bulldog's emphasises speed. Yes, BT allude to high speed and you and I know that's laughable, but for their target market, their message is right. There are almost no companies whose message is not right; the guys who got it wrong went out of business.
By Alaric Snell-Pym, Sat 8th Oct 2005 @ 8:42 pm
Indeed, there is no global best product in a market, just a best product for each purchaser - although that does depend on the market; see Natural Monopoly.
And yes, I feel that one of the big problems with a marketing-led economy is that it becomes harder and harder for the little companies to get a foothold. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, as they say - but that's not a good way to choose a multi-million pound mainframe that will be the core of your business.
In some markets, the "We are a friendly little local company" angle works - like in Stroud near us, there are a lot of local handicrafts, farmer's markets, and so on. But that doesn't go very far in the cynical world of business to business commerce, and only seems to appeal to a certain proportion of consumers.