Any more the hardware itself is a minimal portion of the cost of a product, at least for lower volume products. Instead, the costs are all in the R&D.
Let's say a 450i AP hardware costs $100 to manufacture. One could sell it for $300 and make a profit on the hardware, but perhaps never recover the costs of R&D. So instead you have to increase the costs to the point where you recover the R&D over the life of the product. For a very capable product like the 450i, if you spread the R&D equally over each unit, you'll typically end up with a fairly high price per unit, which may price the units outside the range of the smaller sites in this case. Decreasing the overall product cost so that the smaller sites are affordable might mean that you are back to never recovering your R&D expenses. By offering a different product for the smaller sites which is closer to the manufacturing cost and which recovers a smaller portion of the R&D costs, then one can capture both ends of the market with the same product, while ensuring R&D costs are recovered. Cambium could have just released the product without a license upgrade option, may have even been better for them. The ability to upgrade is a good benefit, but admittedly is a bit of a pain to manage. On Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 1:56 AM Matt Hoppes < mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net> wrote: > I mean. I guess? To me that just shouts of going back to license keys. > > If I can buy it for X, but I can upgrade it to Y with a license key - that > model just never made sense to me. I literally have all he hardware. > There’s no additional cost. You’re just artificially crippling the unit. > > If the hardware can be sold for the price of the LITE and still make a > profit, why is the key needed to unlock features? > > On Oct 29, 2019, at 11:00 PM, Kurt Fankhauser <lists.wavel...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Don't know how I missed this at Wispalooza, just seen on streakwave's > website there is a new 450i AP out with a 20sm limit called LITE and can be > upgraded to full capacity with a key upgrade. > > Cambium C050045AL02B > 5 GHz PMP 450i Connectorized AP FCC LITE > > PMP 450i Connectorized Access Point LITE > > The LITE version will function exactly as the existing PMP 450i AP but it > will be restricted to having 20 subscribers connected. A key can be > purchased to remove this restriction. > > https://streakwave.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=C050045AL02B&eq=&Tp=&o1=0 > > I can see myself using alot of these! Glad it has a 20 SM limit instead of > 10. And there is an integrated 90 degree sector version too. > > AWESOME > > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com > -- - Forrest
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