CompuServe Messages

Andy, OK… maybe I should have offered a better analogy than that of Consumer Reports and customers shopping for cars. What I was really trying to get at is the concept of prudence. When capital is at risk, one should survey the marketplace to determine the likely outcomes of a business strategy. With respect to your employer… Commodore did a very strategic thing when it made a Unix box. The US operation should be commended for keeping it alive. Most customers equate Commodore with quality hardware at bargain basement prices. If Commodore US can provide quality color Unix boxes at bargain basement prices to education/ business/ government, I think the company will have a real winner. One of the case studies out of Harvard deals with the fate of Timex, the watch company. They were king of the low cost watch market shortly after World War II from a zero departure point. In the fifties and sixties, one could walk into any drug store in America and buy a Timex. As kids, we can remember John Cameron Swayze (sic?) saying… "Timex, it takes a licking and keeps on ticking." Timex went from the being the pre-eminent manufacturer of low cost watches to near bankruptcy. Today, they buy watches from an OEM and only resell. What happened: They miscalculated the effect that LED/LCD technologies would have on the low-cost watch market. Andy, I understand your commitment to both the Amiga and Commodore. You certainly understand the tension that often exists between designers and marketeers. How do you get essential non-technical entities like myself and marketeers to understand new technologies and develop a winning business strategy based upon them. That is Commodore's challenge. Many things are happening in the work-station marketplace right now. Whatever Commodore does, it must consider the likely reactions of other companies. Thank-you for your participation in this thread. Hal Grigdesby, Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University [ MORE ]