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Strategies & Market Trends : Market Direction Predictions and BS guesses -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rextar98 who wrote (171)	6/8/2000 3:17:00 PM
From: the Chief	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 234

With MSFT break up official, the umbrella on software pricing is ripped apart. Over the next 24 months, expect pricing for all kinds of software to drift towards the marginal cost.. which is close to zero.! Expect resumption of the NASDAQ sell off in a short order. Deeper and more brutal than the one that began on March 10th. Thats funnier than the onion site!!<ggg> Software, by its very nature holds value if it fills a niche will little competition. Once the R&D is spent on the development the only cost associated with it is shipping packaging and handling. I see the greater costs of packaging being a dead issue.....soon you will be able to go to all of the comapny websites and download the latest version of their software, either as an upgrade or as a new purchase. This elliminates the shipping/handling and packaging expense. If software takes $3 million of R&D and the result is a server with a current copy being dowloaded to the masses, then I do see the price dropping but the margins "absolutely skyrocketing". I use current copies of a number of business software products, I am already seeing the upgrades available on line, soon you will see software stores that have a glossy picture on a rack with a bar code attached. You will swipe the bar code, and the monitor above the rack will explain how the software works and why you should buy it. It will then ask you for your credit card number and e-mail address...by the time you get home you will have the brand new downloaded copy of "pokemon"!!...gggg the Chief

To: Rextar98 who wrote (171)	6/8/2000 3:56:00 PM
From: mc	Respond to of 234

In my opinion the thinking there is backwards. If the Microsoft breakup allows for greater competition in operating systems then think of all the additional costs that software companies will have to incur to write code for multiple platforms. Hell, people can't figure out now if their systems meet minimum hardware requirements. Now we'll throw in different operating systems - end result: confusion. Confusion on the consumer side of things will result in two things: increased marketing costs and decreased propensity to purchase by consumers. Someone is going to have to pay for all that production cost. There is no way that prices will fall to marginal cost because marginal cost will be almost nil (The cost of throwing the software out there on a secure server and paying some accounts receivable people to count the cash coming in). I agree with Chief about distribution savings and increasing margins. I don't think there will be a store with barcodes though...just do everything online and cut out the retailers altogether. Example: PKWare mc