Re: Code/400 price, was Re: PDM/SEU -- RPG400-L

One could argue that IBM's main objective is to sell hardware, in which
case, the more software there is for a given platform, the more it will
sell, and in order to have plenty of application software available,
developers need affordable tools...

Also, I've heard that there are 700,000+ AS/400's out there, somewhere [I
think it's been 5 or 6 years since I've seen the actual hardware]. How many
programmers for all those machines? If it's 1 programmer for every 7 boxes,
that's 100,000 programmers, and at $1200 per copy that's a potential market
of $120,000,000 (one-hundred and twenty million). Say they sell 1/10th of
the potential market and they get $12,000,000 (twelve million). Did they
recoup their costs?

If they sold it for 1/10th the current price and sold it to 10 times as many
programmers, they'd make the same and the price would be a whole lot closer
to my definition of trivial.

Peter Dow
Dow Software Services, Inc.
909 425-0194 voice
909 425-0196 fax

From: Rob Berendt <rob@dekko.com>
> I was going to argue about potential market.  Meaning it costs
> a fixed amount to develop software.  Production of the CD and
> distribution is what, $5?  So if it costs $70,000 to develop
> something, how many copies must you sell to recoup costs?  Granted,
> at a lower price, you'll sell more copies.  But what is the market
> of Code/400 versus the products you mentioned?  Are there really
> that many of us?  However, if IBM charges too low a price we have
> a tendacy to say that the paperwork is not worth the hassle and
> why didn't IBM just include it with everything else?  Such as AFP
> viewer.
>
> Anyone remember the Steve Martin routine where he says, (quite old
> compared with current tick prices), he wants to keep upping his
> ticket prices to where he can charge one fella the whole concert
> price?

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