Suns in the Personal Computer market

[Steven Smith]

With the advent of the new SUN 3/80, Sun is in a position that the company
has never been in before.  Sun can now offer a system that is functionally
as good as (better) than a similarly equipped Macintosh for a lower price.
This places Sun in a much larger market share than they have held in the
past.  Sun can now deliver software "compatible" products that span all
the way from desktop micro to graphic workstations to large scale
mainframes, and in the process, blur the lines dividing them a bit more.
But will Sun be ready for the micro market?

Sun has always been a pioneer in the bang per buck club, under cutting the
likes of DEC and IBM in any price/performance comparison.  They
accomplished this by limiting their profit margin in favor of market
share.  Well, once again it is time for Sun to take this approach, but
this time it must be in software.

In order for Sun to make any dent in the personal computer market, their
notions about software pricing must change.  Since their migration to
SunOS 4.0, Sun has made it known they see software as a profitable
commoditiy.  The "unbundling" of 4.0 says this loud and clear.  Fortran
and Pascal, once considered part of the standard Unix release are now
considered unneeded by the average user, and thus should be sold
seperately.  At the same time, new tools such as SunWrite/Draw/Paint are
priced at an outrageous $1000, even though such tools are considered
mandatory for any functional personal computer in today's market.  Sun
will sell such tools as NeWS for a reasonable cost.  But the primary
reason for this appears to lie in Sun's wishes to make NeWS a standard.

If Sun does plan to move into the low-cost market, then they must make it
affordable to program and use their machines.  There is a lot to be said
for the NeXT machine for this reason alone.  The $6500 that an educator
pays gets him much more than just a black box.  Why Jobs even bundled
Mathematica, not to mention all of the basic tools.

So Sun, if you are listening, you have a chance to knock the top right off
of the low end market.  But you must make it worth while for people to
make the big jump to Unix.  You must convince the cottage software
industry that you will help not hinder them in development.  And you MUST
make it cheaper for people to get basic work done.

Steve Smith
U of Illinois, Microbiology
smith at origin.life.uiuc.edu

These opinions are my own, and not necessarily those of the University of 
Illinois, faculty, or board of trustees.

/*Please mail flames directly, no need to jam the Digest*/

[[ Whoosh!  --wnl ]]