Sal,
>>Norm, what do volumes have to do with anything? Whether Microsoft sells 1 copy of Windows or 1 million, nothing says prices have to drop with volume.
You are absolutely right Sal, under a non-competitive market such as exists in the case of monopolistic forces, there is no reason to offer superior products at lower prices! If only the hardware industry caught on, then you and I would be anticipating the arrival of the 386 machine right about now and at only $4000 it would be an absolute bargain.
>>If you're thinking economies-of-scale, it doesn't apply to software because manufacturing costs are next to zero anyway (it does apply to computer hardware, of course).
>>Volume is absolutely NOT an issue.
So development, test, and marketing are free nowadays? If volume is not an issue then why the OEM discounts for volume on Windows? If volume was not an issue you would see every commercial app ported to every platform in existence.
>>First of all, there's a tremendous difference between commodity items (CD-Roms) and proprietary products (software/OSes). There's pleny of competition in the OS market, anyway. On any platform, not just PCs where Microsoft plays, companies who sell Operating Systems have always priced them highly and continue to do so.
The reason CD-ROMs, floppies, RAM, etc. are commodity items is because there is no proprietary lock on the media/hardware standards they are designed against. Competitive forces tend to drive retail prices down, monopolistic forces tend towards driving per unit costs down.
Hardware design itself is proprietary just like source-code, nobody gives it away. Start producing drive-heads based on an IBM patent and see how quickly they become proprietary in the courts.
Cheers,
Norm |
