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The average customer is MORE likely to act on warm-fuzzies. Human psychology dictates it and the marketplace demonstrates it. The stock market takes that behavi

The average customer is MORE likely to act on warm-fuzzies. Human psychology dictates it and the marketplace demonstrates it. The stock market takes that behavior to the bank daily. The purportedly high cost of OEM development would be mismanagement at best and is simply an informal fallacy at worst. Your rebuttal supports my statements, as captured by this statement: "It's like the PC market of 10 years ago..." Pray tell, which players remain from that era and, of those, which are not on the brink of insolvency?

bunderbunder 15y ago
The average customer is more likely to act on what they perceive as warm fuzzies at the moment that they're making a purchasing decision. That may or may not correlate with what geeks such as ourselves feel warm and fuzzy about in the abstract. Regardless, you misinterpret me. When I said warm fuzzies, I meant companies doing things just to be nice to customers, regardless of whether there's reason to believe it will draw immediate profit. These things can't be reasonably expected to affect revenues for companies that don't have very strong brands (say, Apple) simply because they're things that people generally aren't thinking about while they're in the store. People in general are barely aware of HTC as an actual entity, so they have a hard time having any sort of emotional reaction to it, positive or negative. Pray tell, which players remain from that era and, of those, which are not on the brink of insolvency? Dell, HP, Acer, Samsung, IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba. . . and they're all doing fine. I just double-checked on their rough financials, and all but HP had healthy increasing revenue and profit over the past year. HP's profits are down, but still deep in the black.
- squarecat 15y ago
  I stand corrected on the financial point. And while we can agree that most people are largely brand agnostic in a number of tech-related purchases, sentiment still plays a role, even if it isn't as explicitly expressed in the way a typical Hacker News reader might.

bunderbunder 15y ago

The average customer is more likely to act on what they perceive as warm fuzzies at the moment that they're making a purchasing decision. That may or may not correlate with what geeks such as ourselves feel warm and fuzzy about in the abstract. Regardless, you misinterpret me. When I said warm fuzzies, I meant companies doing things just to be nice to customers, regardless of whether there's reason to believe it will draw immediate profit. These things can't be reasonably expected to affect revenues for companies that don't have very strong brands (say, Apple) simply because they're things that people generally aren't thinking about while they're in the store. People in general are barely aware of HTC as an actual entity, so they have a hard time having any sort of emotional reaction to it, positive or negative. Pray tell, which players remain from that era and, of those, which are not on the brink of insolvency? Dell, HP, Acer, Samsung, IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba. . . and they're all doing fine. I just double-checked on their rough financials, and all but HP had healthy increasing revenue and profit over the past year. HP's profits are down, but still deep in the black.

squarecat 15y ago
I stand corrected on the financial point. And while we can agree that most people are largely brand agnostic in a number of tech-related purchases, sentiment still plays a role, even if it isn't as explicitly expressed in the way a typical Hacker News reader might.