I get a kick out of John Dvorak's opinions in PC magazine. He recently predicted problems for the PC box makers, to happen after the current crop of 300+ MHz boxes have been around long enough to be sold to the first wave of people who will snap them up for legitimate needs or just to have one.
Software companies, he notes, are smart enough to write for the dominate platform. Previously this meant write for PCs, then perhaps a version for Macs. Today he sees them noticing the large amount of people with $1,000 PCs. Instead of writing software for the cutting edge fast PCs, he sees them writing for what's actually out there. It's worth keeping an eye on the top selling software. So long as it works just fine on $1,000 PCs, which are actually quite powerful, there will be little need for people to buy the fastest, most expensive computers.
This means first time buyers will go for the low margin PCs. But the bigger news may be the upgrades. If many of your sales have been to people who already had a computer but after a few years needed to upgrade, and suddenly there is no compelling need to upgrade, a big chunk of sales fall away. |
