DaveP wrote:
You are assuming that the market conditions remained static. Let me show you:
Oh, no! You ARE assuming that I'm assuming -pfew, this is getting difficult :-) -
No, perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough. What I was trying to say was:
The market was changing so fast (opposed to static :-) ) that C= failed to analyse correctly the situation. 1992, when A1200 and A4000 were presented, was simply too late. No company can compete in such a growing and changing market without a single update -and I mean a REAL update, not a cosmetic one (i.e., A500+, A600)- in nearly 7 years. SEVEN YEARS! This period of time is way too long in computer industry. And when the update comes to light, it turn out to be a cut down design.
In the meantime, they jumped into the PC market with a line of computers that were already DEAD as competitive product
Right. There. Thats a static assumption. The A600 and A500+ were
the WORST Amiga computers I ever used. Complete waste of space - you know
I agree here. But no with the assumed assumption :-)
what C= did? Brought out a new version. Now the market conditions
for the PC changed significantly in 1994/5. There the rebranding and
re-using of off the shelf parts in common started to increase and prices dropped.
Dell and IBM ( I happen to know one of those inside out btw ) started
to cut their costs by outsourcing component manufacture. The cost
of producing a GOOD PC compat machine dropped like a stone.
That's the REAL question! Why C= did not joined this way of doing things, just as Apple did? Simply bad management decisions. Now you can see where both companies are...
Because C= stopped investing in its line ( because it got burnt ) by
over-reacting and misunderstanding the problem in its PC line they
did the wrong thing.
The real problem was that they didn't recover their investment made in the PC line, and nearly abandoned the line that was really selling well. Of course, any abandoned thing only gets worse and worse...
No you just agreed with me. I said that the PC business was loss making
and they took the gamble that it would REMAIN loss making and were wrong.
No, I don't agree. They wanted to enter the PC market because they thought it was the 'serious' market and profitable, but they did it the WRONG way with uncompetitive products. Bad management decisions=bad investments, bad investments=losses, too many losses=bankruptcy.
Hang on. You just said that the Amiga market was doing really well. Now
you agree with me - they let the Amiga market slowly die. In fact the
A1200 and A4000 would never have made inroads into PC magnitude
sales - at best they would have kept even for say 12 months.
Agreed. They appeared too late and were not as good as expected, but that was a very bad
management decision.
Wrong on one count there - sound was the Atari domain and then
Atari domain was MIDI, not sound, at least not by itself.
PC solutions took over early 90s in the sales ranks. The second count
graphics. C'mon. Even in 1991 we were using PCs with 24bit graphics
cards that could run rings around the Amigas for image quality.
Agreed again. But read my previous comments on A1200 and A4000: too late and less than expected.
The specific TINY niche of "multimedia" displays the Amiga had
a small and SHRINKING market in.
Again, I think it was due to a bad C= move. As we say in my country, "Quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta", or "Don't byte off more than you can chew" .
No. I disagree. Their biggest mistake was not including a flicker fixer in
the A1200 and A4000 as standard so even those of us stupid enough
to buy monitors ( increasing the cost of the machines
Agreed again. The good direction was the A3000. That was a modern design, and its evolution was even better and could have been ready long before, but as said previously, they wanted to cut it out.
That's why we all should know the truth about the past, if we don't want to repeat it.
You said it. Read it and weep.
Too old for weeping for such things :-)
Saluditos,
Ferrán
