Re: the Papenmeir device that was supposed to be coming out

["A. R. Vener" <salt@aero-vision.com>]

Janina,

He gave you one. Assistive technology aims for a low quantity 
market.  If there were milions of blind people pounding on the
doors to buy this product, competition would pick up, prices would drop
and market forces would determine the cost.  This doesn't happen
with assistive technology. The market is small, the prices must
be set to allow the small customer base (which is businesses and
rehab programs, NOT the end user) to cover research and development
costs, marketing costs, business overhead and a profit.  

Yes, that ugly old P word. Much as some people gnash their teeth and
raise their voices in fury, nonetheless profit is the only real market
motivator that allows assistive hardware technology to be developed.

There's a lot that goes into any commercial product. The fact that they
use Linux probably helps keep the price down, but there are still
software development costs, hardware development costs, packaging costs,
marketing costs, administrative costs.   

This isn't Woz and Jobs in their garage selling a hand made 
gizmo that they packed into an aluminum hobby box they got from
radio shack. It is a commercial product that required physical design, electrical
design, UL Lab testing, FCC Class B RF emission certification, marketing
support, administration support, engineering supprot and so forth and
so on.  All of it pricey. All of it having to be recovered from sales. 

And not very many sales at that.  

Computer prices have done down because they sell in the
tens of millions, even hundreds of millions these days. 

This product is not going to sell a million.


Rudy










On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 04:23:48PM -0500, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Tommy, wait a minute here, computers cost less today across the board. If 
> we believe what you say, that we get what we pay for, then they should be 
> poorer computers, not more powerful ones. This just isn't the case.
> 
> So, why are computer prices coming down everywhere except assistive 
> technology, where they're going up? I understand about refreshable braille 
> displays. I don't understand at all about the rest of it. The 
> Papenmeier/Alva web page points out that much linux software is free or 
> low cost. So, are you guys packaging free software and charging more for 
> it? Please, this price needs an honest explanation.
>