SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: George von Dassow who wrote (10706)4/1/1998 11:56:00 PM
From: SteveHC  Respond to of 213177
 
<<BTW, as a shareholder, I'm thrilled they're charging for Quicktime. And as a bigtime user of Quicktime, I'm thrilled they're only charging 30 bucks. Why the heck is there so much noise on the web Mac-rags about it?>>

Because the "big boys" in THE "entertainment industry" don't want to have to pay the royalties, & thus some people are concerned about the possibility that "the entertainment industry" will jump QuickTime's ship as a result. Personally, I don't buy it & think the entertainment "big boys" are just being their usual, cheap and conniving selves.



To: George von Dassow who wrote (10706)4/1/1998 11:58:00 PM
From: rhet0ric  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 213177
 
Oh, and I completely forgot about Windows users. How many of them are there, anyway, and what's the penetration of Quicktime?

For multimedia software that is worth charging something in the first place, Quicktime is completely dominant on both Mac and Windows. QT's market penetration is like Netscape's before IE came along.

So let's use your arithmetic on the total market. There's two sources of revenue, licensing at $1/CD and the Pro version at $30.

The formula should be:

#users x %licensable x #CDs x $1 = $licensing_revenue
#users x %upgraders x $30 = $Pro_revenue

This is a wild guess, but let's say the the total number of computers capable of running QT3 is 100 million. Assuming 20% of CDs are licensable, and users running those computers buy 10 CDs a year, licensing revenue looks like:

100,000,000 x 20% x 10 x $1 = $200,000,000

Now let's assume that 5% of users upgrade to Pro. That looks like:

100,000,000 x 5% x $30 = $150,000,000

Can these numbers possibly be right? And if so, can Apple really enforce and collect the licensing fee? $1 seems very high to me. Anyone?

rhet0ric



To: George von Dassow who wrote (10706)4/2/1998 12:40:00 AM
From: Spytrdr  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 213177
 
"We are all interim" (Steve Jobs)