On February 18, 2007 at 17:15, rlustig said...
Does this statement not completely contradict pretty much
everything Steve has said up to this point? He has stated
several times that Lifware is far beyond what Crestron
and AMX are. LW is the "best" media manager etc etc.
If the goal is only 95% of the capability of Crestron
or AMX, then how is this ever going to be a market leader,
especially at the same , or higher cost than Crestron
or AMX?
Guys this is a simple toyota/lexus model versus say a bmw or bentley. Toyota came in to an already dominated luxury car business with the lexus product, which was just a rebadged and touched up camry. They promised better service, increased margin, and streamlined luxury cars. They built off a dominant platform of toyota and built what today outsells any luxury car company by nearly triple and their dealers enjoy higher margins and greater profitably than anyone they compete with it. It is very arguable that a lexus is not as good as a bmw, mercedes, or bentley. But Lexus beat them by finding parts of their business that where exposed, and they built a product that was probably 95% of the way there in performance, but killed them in every other aspect that most customers care about. It wasn't the last 2 foot of the braking distance, or the extra 10 HP, or the prestige. Even the majority of the wealthy have earned their status and for the most part they like products that do 95% of the nitch things, like sophistication while being streamlined, well serviced, and well respected. Lexus is arguably even better is some areas. Lexus sound systems kill the one in the BMW. Microsoft is our dominate platform, nearly every customer you will have in the next two years will already own a PC with the Vista OS and be using it for movies, tv, pictures, and music. Think about expanding that platform and making it better and more powerful, rather than trying to sell against it. You can not convince a lexus owner that there is anything better and they have the hgihest return buyer rate of any luxury automobile. If you went out looking at doctors, lawyers, accountants, and the core customer base of lexus, you would find a crowd that loves and depends on microsoft and software applications that run on it. I realize that you may not fully understand the model, but we are here to help CI guys take advantage of this trend and market acceptance and we are doing very well. CI has been and will continue to be one of our core focuses. If you want to talk to dealers that have been very happy and successful installing and selling our product, drop me a personal email. I would bet that we already have a dealer or two in your market, and some of the best in the US, they are seeing this as a major peice of thier business over the next few years.