Steven D'Aprano wrote: <cut> > > > I think you are over-estimating both the numbers and profitability of such > niche software distributors, and misunderstanding the business models of > them.
Coincidently, I worked at a software company making a "standard" administration software for primary schools. Which concentrate on the national market. Because this in the Netherlands, not such a big country, the customer base is not that big. So on a population of 17 million people there are about 7.500 thousands primary schools, our market share was quit big we had 4.500 thousands customers, there where "only" about 7 other competitive products/companies in that market. The software was sold in 3 separates modules requiring a yearly renewal, the base module was required for all customers the other modules where add on packages, the base module cost about 500 EUR, then there where 2000 clients for 350 EUR module and about 500 clients for the third 250 module. They also sold administration software for the academic market with about the same annual income as that of the primary schools. So for a niche market on a small user base using non-consulting software, they had a quite profitable steady income. Perhaps not the billions of dollars you expect from a software company but for me and the 40 other employees it was enough to say that we didn't over-estimated both the numbers and profitability of such a niche software distributor and we sure didn't misunderstood the business model of that. Unfortunately the profitable company was merged by the VC's with 8 non-profitables companies because they had that this would make them all profitable. -- mph -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
