The other day I became aware that a vendor with a proprietary RTOS for MCUs is busy locking in clients with full featured but proprietary offerings. They are doing so with the help of a major semiconductor vendor. The typical asking price is $120 000 US for the license. There is another vendor that does the same thing with a $65 000 license but without the semiconductor vendor.
Can you imagine finding out two years later that you were completely locked in to a set of APIs that everyone else in the industry is abandoning? When they discover that they can't hire trained people and can't easily reuse software that their competitors can, how will they feel. For good reason, the customers will be pissed.
I don't know what the semiconductor vendor is thinking. They will surely loose customers as they shoulder the blame months later.
The customers of the 65K product can only blame themselves.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Who works on SuperBowl Sunday?
I was surprised today. I was expecting to be one of the very rare few online responding to emails and was shocked to find colleagues working too. You know who really gets things done when their work week starts on Sunday afternoon or evening.
I could name all the people that I knew that weren't working but I'd much rather give credit to those that were.
I could name all the people that I knew that weren't working but I'd much rather give credit to those that were.
- Reed Hinkel - TI
- Kevin King - Renesas
- Ellen Miller - Ellen Miller and John Lindsay, Chartered Accountants
- Polly Yuehe - LED Lighting Manufacturing
- Terry Higgins - Aviaeology
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
