I remember watching a live broadcast few years ago. Mr. Bill Gates & co were addressing the press, most probably at the launch of an OS or something similar. Now, I am not quoting verbatim of course, but more or less the gist of the discussions.
One lady, who looked Asian, asked a question very close to my heart: “We all know how piracy is affecting legit sales of software. Why can’t MS reduce sticker price of their OS to $10, instead of $100 & bring a true fight to this menace?”
The answer, however, wasn’t & still isn’t one of my favourites: “It does not make business sense to sell such a sophisticated (???) product at such prices! We would rather sell limited quantities, unlock the value quicker & keep using the same to provide more sophisticated products to the world (???). Who has the time, infrastructure or wherewithal to make commercial sense of a $10 product?”
In short, Gates & Co. were happy to sell, say 1 million official OS discs & also made enough money thereby. IF the rest of the 9 million users were operating their cheapskate PCs off pirated software, so be it!
If we look at MS’s POV clinically, it does make “some” sense. After all a software is NOT soap! It’s NOT supposed to used by anybody & everybody. And even if they aspire to, they should NEVER forget that they CANNOT ever AFFORD the “real thing”. Come on, inclusive is a word that belong’s in the Dictionary of Political Democracy, right?
Wrong.
Remember T Series in the eighties? They literally upgraded the Indian radio junkies to Compact Cassettes & portable tape-recorders! Yes, SONY, HMV & their ilks did have their archives on audio-cassettes, before T Series did, but cassettes, for them, were “sophisticated” products….like Windows may be?
Ms Moser Baer was absolutely on the ball when they took on the “DVD” format a-la T Series. However, their front-end failed to sweat and muddled things up quite a bit, during the 1st few years. Today Moser Baer has got the reins back and I am certain they will have their act together, pretty soon.
What am I driving at? The same! Just as pirated / spurious goods do not contribute much to a nation’s vital economy, “elitist” products too end up fattening a very few hand-picked wallets.
Unless we address the mass, grow usage exponentially (of all consumables), our economies will inevitably keep getting cyclically top-heavy & then topple.
We need to cure our Gate’s Syndrome & push Rs.10 as the most monetizable MRP. The sooner, the better.
- Arnab
Sphere: Related Content
Email
Print
Loading ...
November 18th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Well timed ! Just as L’Oreal sues My Dollar Store for importing directly and selling cheaper ! Not a relevant example but it fits the spirit.
Technology aside, I have always wondered why a basic things as diapers are so expensive in country like ours. And they are not even an ‘Elitist’ product.
November 18th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Must admit that the Dollar Store article “did” influence me too, to some extent.
You see, finally it’s “easy money”. Won’t we all LOVE to sell 2 packs of diaper & make the same amount of money, rather than selling 20?
This fast-buck philosophy is the root cause of the rich-poor divide.
We fail to realise “how” the cumulative effect of this dangerous syndrome can pull us all back to the black hole.
Look at some countries in Africa & you’d know exactly what I mean….
Thanks