The question should rather be why would they market Infini-D 4/0 when they have RDS 5.
FYI, RDD & RDS together prior to theshipment of Expression and Detailer last fall represented 1/3 of Fractal's revenues, or about 3 times the annual revenues of Specular for the same period. As for installed base, the registered user base of RDD/RDS was about 6 - 7 times that of Specular.
So, to answer your question: I'm afraid you are correct and it makes absolutely no sense from a mktg standpoint. It will simply confuse the customers, and demoralize some developers (at least one side or the other). My guess is that this is a short term revenue interest that is motivating the move. Specular must ave almost finished v4 ofInfini-D hence the cost to shipthe update tothe installed base is minimalvs. the potential short term revenues. I suspect MCRE management is fully aware of the respective size of the products (RDD/RDS 3 -4 times what Infini-D is) and will quietly let Infini-D be subsumed into RDD in future releases. This would also seem logical if, as John Wilzcak pointed out, the Specular Engineer are working on the RTG stuff now.
Hope this helps.
Eric
Note: As a shareholder, I was personally very disappointed by the Specular acquisition. I think it sends the wrong message to customers, to the engineers, and to Wall Street. I also think ifthey really wanted the engineers of Specular, it was both cheaper and more efficient to give them the money and hire them rather than buy the company. Finally, I think the timing was really poor. Specular had serious difficulties due to the overall mkt (as proved bythe info in the proxy) and was getting cheaper by the minute. Waiting would, in my opinion, have been much more efficient (except of course fo the Specular shareholders). |
