#The real question is
24 messages in this thread
"The OS is now in revision 3.1, there is over 10,000 applications
available, there is 5,000,000 machines out there. How much bigger
does it need to get before the market is established. There usually
is less than that before competition starts."
Your logic doesn't hang together too well. Very few of those 10,000
alleged applications are actively marketed – and very few are big
sellers.
5,000,000 machines – mostly older, slower and used for games –
doesn't make a market. It's people buying new software, new machines
and new peripherals that make a market. You can judge the extent of
the Amiga market just by trying to find a dealer near you – at least
in the US.
Finally, the specific kind of competition being spoken of here is
between the genuine AmigaOS running on an actual Amiga and a
maybe-it-be-developed clone. That's a big difference – and the
number of existing machines doesn't have much relevance.
The real question is where will both the dealers and the customers
for an Amiga clone come from? Who's got the money to develop and
support that market? What advantages would potential buyers
perceive?
If you look at the history of the Amiga marketplace, I think you'd have to
ask how a clone could expect to succeed where the original failed.
Jerry
Jerry,
<< If you look at the history of the Amiga marketplace, I think you'd have to
ask how a clone could expect to succeed where the original failed.>>
Better marketing, better developer support, backward systems compatibility,
competitive pricing, continuued innovative design, quality oriented production,
emphasis on on customer service and dealer support………..
-mls
ProActive Images Inc.
"WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT ALL DAY LONG" – RW EMERSON
"Better marketing, better developer support, backward systems compatibility,
competitive pricing, continuued innovative design, quality oriented production,
emphasis on on customer service and dealer support……….."
And a decade old design that has a ton of obscurity or worse to
overcome? Sounds like a pretty expensive job to me – and I don't see
any indication that either CEI or the UK group has the financial
resources to do this.
I agree. Six months ago things looked like they (both CEI and UK)
had a lot more potential. The fact that no one could come up with
enough bucks to just make the purchase happen makes me think that
they don't have enough to do what it takes if the purchase ever does
happen.
"The fact that no one could come up with enough bucks to just make the purchase
happen makes me think that they don't have enough to do what it takes if the
purchase ever does happen."
Is that actually what happened, Dale? I thought the delays were
occasioned by creditor's turf battles, missing or unaccounted
inventory and the general complexity of Commodore's global structure.
I didn't realize that the two primary bidders were facing money
problems, save the problems occasioned by backers losing interest
over the repeated delays.
In regard to marketing a revitalized Amiga brand, I think there's
general consensus that neither of these entities could really afford
to do that on the large scale required by todays industry.
As far as I can tell, every time the situation changed, everyone withdrew any
tentative offers or bids and talked to their lawyers for two weeks.
I'm sure that if someone had made a formal offer, it would have been
considered. The difference between how much the value went down in
the last six months and the amount you might have been overpaying
because you guessed wrong on the available assets would probably have
been in the bidders favor.
The problem was most likely that the finance people didn't put up
carte blanche money. Given that, I doubt they are willing to put up
much more.
Pulling numbers out of the air, if I have a business plan that says:
$50 million – buy C=
$500 million – start new production line and build less than a million
machines
$250 million – aggresive marketing plan
$100 million – moderate R&D
If I have this, I'm not going to worry all that much about what is
included for the $50 million. A pile of a few thousand machines one
way or the other wouldn't matter. A few piles of inexpensive parts
one way or the other wouldn't matter. I'd just pay the $50 million
so that I could get on with the rest of my plans. If it had to go to
$75 or $100, I probably wouldn't hesitate, as long as it meant I
could start now.
On the other hand, if my plan called for
$50 million – buy Commodore
$1 million – assemble every machine possible with the supply of parts
available, making a good profit off those, then sell off
patents, etc.
Then I guess I'd worry about every nickle and dime and EXACTLY what physical
inventory was available.
Great illustration, Dale! <G>
Jerry
Thanks for the compliment? I can't for the life of me figure out what
your message is in reply to (I just searched my 6 week history file
and could only find messages from you with this exact subject).
" I can't for the life of me figure out what your message is in reply to"
Your financial illustration/example re a resurrected Amiga.
Jerry
Where I said "$50 million to buy C=, $500 million to manufacture?"
Who changed the topic name?
"Who changed the topic name?"
Beats me. Happens a lot around here.
Jerry
Dale,
I've got a final, or near-final copy of ApAssist that _should_, hopefully, run
on your setup. Will you try it for me? Should pay attention to your screen
modes, etc, once you tell it what you want to configure it.
Including running in your 4-color mode.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Jerry,
Indeed, strategic alliances are going to be very important to either
company to continue the Amiga technology.
Regards,
John Chang
"Indeed, strategic alliances are going to be very important to either company
to continue the Amiga technology."
I would imagine so – and don't doubt for a moment that both of the primary
contenders have been trying to strike those deals for the past several months.
If they haven't . . . well . . . that kind of says it all, doesn't it?
Jerry
Sigh, I should think so. I really have to get some specifications on
the Sony PlayStation. I have a contact in Japan. I'll ask him to
see if he can send me anything on the PlayStation. In English I
hope.
I'd think Nancy could fax you something from Porter's files…
Dale,
Hey, good idea! Should have thought about that myself, but then that's why I
have you around! ;-}
Regards,
John Chang
Have me around hell. You never call when you are up visiting your snuggle-b
nny. You love her but not me.
Seems to me that "where will both the dealers and the customers for an Amiga
clone come from?", is the problem for the clone developer to answer.
Apple (II series), and the IBM both had their clones. The better
ones survived, and the inferior ones didn't. In the case of Compaq,
they were noted for building a clone that was an improvement upon the
original.
If a clone outift can build a better Amiga, than the orignal, I'm
open to it.
As it stands, nobody is building anything, and the market for the
Amiga is evaporating. This is somehow better than having a clone
vendor with boxes on the shelves?
So how would a clone builder expect to succeed where the Amiga has failed?
Well, they might just offer more bang for the buck, provide some sort
of rational marketing plan, and then even implement it.
To send the reverse of the question back your way….
How can the buyer of the Amiga expect to succeed, where the original
failed?
IMHO it's becoming pretty plain to see that neither group is overly
endowed with monitary backing. If either were, they could offer a
sum that would make the liquidators snap to attention, and put the
bid beyond the grasp of the opposition. As more details surface, it
looks more and more like the dollar figures are pretty low. While
one always wants to get the best price, there is a steady errosion of
the value of the porperty. While the bidders are moaning about the
liquidators not understanding this, they also don't seem well heeled
enough to put a bid on the table so that they can get the rights and
be on their way to the financial riches they supposed to be at the
end of a resurrected Amiga Rainbow.
– Alex… Celebrating 10 years on Compuserve
"How can the buyer of the Amiga expect to succeed, where the original failed?"
You put your finger on it, Alex, and the answer is that none of us know.
As a matter of purely personal opinion, I think the two groups have totally
different objectives in mind. The UK group, from what I've seen, hopes to
re-establish the Amiga in the European market which was the core to begin with.
I don't know enough about that market to offer an opinion as to the viability
of doing that.
CEI's plan seems to concentrate more on the higher-end and the US market.
My personal feeling – and taking into account my absolute ignorance
of the European market – is that the Amiga has excellent potential as
a niche machine in the US, generating perhaps between $20 and
$50-Million in annual revenues for the near-term.
I don't personally think that there's any hope of re-establishing the brand
as a mass market machine.
"Apple (II series), and the IBM both had their clones."
Bear in mind if you will that the Apple and IBM situations were entirely
different. Apple moved aggressively against the one clone manufacturer I
remember (Franklin) and essentially pushed them out of the business. Since that
time, to the best of my recollection, there have been only two Apple clones,
both using the Mac ROM's. Apple invested in one (Outbound). Both have long
since gone out of business, Outbound being slaughtered by Apple's introduction
of the PowerBook.
IBM produced an open architecture to begin with allowing anyone to produce
the machine without legal restraint. IBM promptly shot itself in the foot with
the PCjr and allowing itself to become mired in internal turf wars that
literally distracted its attention from the market. I forget the exact name of
the book ("Big Blues" maybe), but Compaq would never have made it to first base
if IBM had not cancelled several machines because of internal squabbles.
In both these cases, though, Apple and IBM had established markets
and huge brand recognition. People could be convinced that purchasing
a lower cost 100% clone might be worth the risk.
As often lamented here, most people have never heard of the "Omega". Thus the
only people who might be induced to buy a clone are those who already own an
Amiga – and they have shown little inclination in the past to upgrade their
equipment with the real thing, so why should they be expected to purchase a
clone?
Personally I think the entity that acquires the Amiga technology and
aggressively markets it as a niche machine is going to make a lot of money. Not
as much as Bill Gates, perhaps, but definitely enough to buy a yacht or
something like that.
But I have serious reservations about a re-established Amiga product making
it in the mass market – and even less belief that a clone could do it.
Jerry
I don't know that there is no hope of re-establishing the Amiga as a mass
market machine…. However, to have any hope of doing so, you'd first have to
go where the money is. ie. niche markets Once you are turning a profit, you
could trickle down some lower cost machines into a larger market. Any
resurgence would have to be inch by inch, if even that is possible.
I can't picture any senerio that would have the Amiga suddenly grandly plopped
back in the middle of the battle.
Apple for all the shortcomings that I feel the Mac has, has been an excellent
marketer, and even they find it hard to hang in there. Many of the once
specific Mac titles, and often they are developed for MS Dos, and then ported
to the Mac.
It would be even harder for the new owners to roll out the Amiga as a do it
all machine, especially with the relatively few remaining active developers.
Without the bucks to go RISC, I don't see a future at all for the machine.
(True the 68060 may be a really great processor, but the world wants RISC.
Just as they want it to run 123, Windows, or whatever the fad of the moment
was.)
Franklin was one of the first cloners, but there were others. Laser
Technology comes to mind. They also produced PC clones. Not sure if they are
still in business. Supposedly there is a Mac clone ready to go out of Taiwan.
However I'm not sure that it is 100% compatible.
As for an Amiga clone….
If it were to the Amiga, as the Comnpaq was to IBM, faster and better, then
I'd be interested. However, the decision to market or not, would be with the
potential makers of the clone. In a free marketplace, we are all able to give
it a shot. (Within the bounds of copyright and patent laws.)
I don't give either one a very big chance, but at the present time we have
zilch, so anything would be an improvement.
– Alex… Celebrating 10 years on Compuserve
We seem to be in agreement, Alex.
Jerry
PMFJI here, but:
> the 68060 may be a really great processor, but the world wants RISC.
I'd hedge that idea: What "the world" wants is a specific level of
performance, and they aren't too concerned with the mechanics; after all,
it was always the Amiga's custom ASICs, rather than its CPU, that made it
"do its thing" better than any other desktop system.
And it's also interesting to note that, in "the world" of Interactive
TV, the industry leaders have been saying that "The PC world is missing
the point; we have to keep costs down, so we'll be concentrating on 68000-
level processors with minimal memory." (Ask John Chang if this isn't
true.)
I've been thinking for some time now that the ideal CPU to "restart"
the Amiga line with would be the 68060 (which by the way _is_ a RISC-chip
with an internal 68K command-translator); and then Amiga Inc. ought to
work with Motorola and their Flex-something-or-other libraries to develop
an Amiga-specific CPU (Motorola is working very hard to make it affordable
for small companies to "roll their own" processors): What about a
variation on the Motorola ColdFire concept — a custom CPU that could read
and process four 16-bit (68K) or two 32-bit (68040) instructions at the
same time? How about two floating-point processors in the same chip?
What if the CPU itself was smart enough to route Amiga-chipset calls down
different busses according to how ChipRam had been allocated? If you
could access the ChipRam as fast as you could access the CPU caches, there
wouldn't be ANYTHING on the market that could touch it.
— And let's forget all this "Windoze-compatible" nonsense: You don't
see Silicon Graphics worrying about running Lotus 123; they're neither
"mainstream" nor "high-percentage", but they sure as hell seem to be
making a profit….
"A 'Creative Amiga'? Hell, we ALL knew that…."
Mr. C
Mr. C.,
I agree with much of what you have written.
Indeed, most of the companies that are interested in Interactive
Television (ITV) want an inexpensive set-top box ($300 or less). At
least initially. There have been some studies in which some claim
that interactive television will have a slow growth, only exist in
large metropolitan markets and may be unprofitable for the first five
years. Thereafter, the market will boom as consumers accept it in
the mainsteam and will be bigger than the current Radio/TV/Cable
market combined.
The AA chipset, if it can be cost reduced further, may have great
potential in the ITV market. In addition, the desktop video market
will probably grow immensely as content providers try to fill in the
bandwidth with low-cost programming. Yes, the Amiga may find itself
in this niche market and WHAT A MARKET IT WILL BE!
Regards,
John Chang