Author: Terry McCracken
Date: 13:41:54 05/13/01
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On May 13, 2001 at 16:04:15, Fernando Villegas wrote: >This industry still is, was and will be trapped in the same structural >weakneses: >a) a tiny professional market and a moderate "mass" market disputed by too many >companies for the money that can be got. >B) margins of profit going down due to technological development. In the 80's >you could ask hundreds of dollars for a plastic piece of junk made in china >encassing a processor the size of a nail. Cost: 25 dollars: Price: 150 dollars. >Now you can ask perhaps 50 bucks for a CD that cost maybe 10 or 15 to produce, >all included. Absolute and percentual margins going down... >C) plastic shit made in China could not be copied as CD are. >d) In old times there were perhaps 4 important players: Fidelity, Hagener, >Saitek, Novag. Even so two of them went down very soon. Now you have dozens of >commercial or non commercial players: every chess program that can be put in the >Web is a competitor in his own; every programmer than can produce some Cd's is a >player; every one can do that with almost no investment. And all goes for the >same market. > >Survival in these conditions for a dedicated chess producing company is possible >only -and even with lot of problems- with a moderately, familiar size and kind >of company, Schroeder-style. Reduced cost, the owners makes his own programs, >the wife of one of them sell the tickets, the nephew answer the phone, etc. > >The other way, the Millenium way, even the Chessbase way, is not viable in the >long or even middle term shot. It is a matter of sheer numbers... >Fernando Hello Fernando,with generalities aside, which company are we referring to? This post started with a "High Profile Company" gone into liquidation. Terry
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