Re: Creating markets (long)

[Michael Hagerty <mhagerty@FNOC.NAVY.MIL>]

On 18 Sep 1994, Robert Dewar <dewar@CS.NYU.EDU> wrote:

<snip>

RD> And Mike, before you try to figure out how a company can make money
  > selling compilers to students, just remember that Borland is going
  > broke, despite the fact that it has an essentially massive control
  > of the educational compiler market.

I am not sure, but I seriously doubt that Borland is going broke because
of their compiler business and its success in the educational market.  I
would think that their rampant business buying program of the past
several years is more at fault.  After all, one does not have to buy too
many companies only to orphan their products before you have a real big
cash-flow problem.

Let's count the orphans:  Sprint, Brief, TurboBASIC, ObjectVision, ...
And certainly count in the huge payout to A-T for dBASE right after the
court said that the dBASE language (previously considered a major asset)
was "public domain"...

All in all, Borland's failures seem to be more in areas other than their
mainline Pascal and C++ compiler products, which still seem to be very
successful in both the educational and non-educational markets; rather
it appears to be the injudicious "investment" of the money they were
making from the compiler business...

Regards, Mikey
---
Michael Patrick Hagerty, Computer Sciences Corp.    | mhagerty@fnoc.navy.mil
Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center | Phone:  (408) 656-4456
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