You can not only argue it, but it is essentially fact. Without the ability to segment the market through licensing options, Agilent would be left contracting out to Rigol for their lowest model scopes and selling them with a $400 markup. Options are a way to push high end features into the low end product range.
Yes, and I think it's ultimately the only way to keep the most number and widest range of customers happy, whilst remaining a profitable business.
The low end customers probably get the best deal because they are getting some of the new advanced technology at affordable prices, sometimes at almost unsustainable (on their own) although not loss-leading prices. The medium end customers pay a bit more for some extra features they want, so are generally fairly happy. And as you say, the higher end customers get screwed the most, but Agilent know they don't care too much about price at that point anyway, and they get the fat margins on those to pay for all the new R&D. It's a nice balance all-round, but the trick is getting the balance right.
Take the example of Eagle for getting the mix wrong, so wrong that it makes the middle options fairly pointless.
And take a look at Altium for what happens when the "all you can eat" system goes wrong. They got so carried away at one point trying to maximise profit margin, that the only usable package was $12K or so, just to lay out a 555 PCB to flash a LED.
They had to settle into the middle ground of pricing (now $5K) just to stay in the market. But the price is still too high for hobbyists and most one-man-bands, and many small companies, so they lose all those customers they once had when customers enjoyed their system of paying for just what you wanted.
And it's one of the main reasons why the company is going down the toilet and the policy is much loathed by the loyal users. Most are getting screwed because they know they are being forced to pay for all of the features that they don't use, and they are having a hard time attracting the low end any more, so there they sit on this tight-rope of a single priced product, struggling to get enough R&D income for all the new features they have promised, marketing have no options to sell to entice new people in, and many people simply go elsewhere because they don't get the sense that they can buy just what they want.
As a customer, you either sit in that one sweet spot they are covering, or you leave.
I think it's much harder to run a company like that than it is to offer the traditional tiered pricing options.
The one problem with options is that it does show up what parts are selling and what's not.
For example, if it was really hard to develop the FlexRay serial decode function, and very few people bought it, then it's hard to justify keeping it and refining in the future. Although for a scope, that essentially a write-once and done type thing.
In the case of software like Altium, the stuff needs continual upgrading and resources and support. If you spend all this money developing something and only a few percent buy it as a option, then it is really obvious to everyone where the R&D money is best spent. That's great for the product and company of course, but not so great if your company vision relies on it pushing that stuff. You have to be the type of company that is willing to say "that's stuff isn't selling, so we'll drop it."
Dave.
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