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The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too early cancels sales of the current project. People forget when Osborne was losing

The Osborne effect whee announcing a future product before it is made way too early cancels sales of the current project. People forget when Osborne was losing sales, the IBM PC and PC-DOS was gaining sales and CP/M systems like those made by Osborne had a lot of competition. Microsoft/IBM had a converter program that could convert CP/M-80 programs to DOS programs. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608077.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2015/04/17/10608... Also Kaypro had won over Osborne customers with their own CP/M machines that reached the market before the new Osborne models. Commodore had the VIC-20 and later Commodore-64 that provided cheaper computers as did the 8 bit Atari line. Some people would rather buy a $399 Commodore or Atari computer and hook it up to their TV screen. So announcing a new product too far ahead of time was only one factor in the Osborne effect. Makerbot has Chinese competition, and they had technical issues as well. There are more factors here than just announcing a new product too far ahead of time. Instead of Osborne it is more like the Apple III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III

hugs 12y ago
(Author here.) I agree with you, there are several factors at play in what happened to MakerBot. I believe Bre learned the wrong lesson -- going closed might have looked like the obvious solution to their drop in sales. But the one huge advantage MakerBot had over their competitors (and the cloners) was the good will and support from the open source community. With that support gone after going closed, MakerBot had to sink or swim on its own. I think they could have found a way to stay open while dealing with concerns of revealing future plans. For one, they could have kept the plans closed during development, but released all the plans on launch, forcing their competitors to play catch-up. As a user, I wouldn't necessarily need access to future designs for future models, but definitely would want designs to the current model that I owned. But anyway, I now buy LulzBot 3D printers, which are fully open. The latest version is TAZ 5.0. I can't tell, though, just by looking at the LulzBot online repo [1] if plans for future versions are also posted there ahead of official release. [1]: http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ [Edit] LulzBot is more awesome than I thought. They post the source for future versions that they're working on, too: http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html "'Kauri' - EVT version of the next printer after TAZ 5.0"
hyperpallium 12y ago
And Osbourne probably preannounced so early because of the competition (to pre-empt users switching). Preannouncement and failure were correlated due to a common cause. OTOH MS vapourware has scuttled competitors. So it depends on your market power. Osbourne was against IBM and a disruptive tide.
- xorcist 12y ago
  Also Intel with Itanium.
- jkestner 12y ago
  Right - it was a move of desperation. Perhaps Osbourne could've marketed/distributed their way out. But it's hard to position yourself as the brand that no one gets fired for buying when someone's already got that spot. With MakerBot, another issue may be that the market is approaching saturation. As they're being eaten by cheaper competitors, they haven't been able to create a new market to grow into. I suppose the Replicator is an attempt to do that - how has that done?
hga 12y ago
Furthermore, Osborne himself in a front page Wall Street Journal article and/or interview admitted he lied about the cause of the company's demise. This section from Wikipedia casts further doubt on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myt... and I should really get around to working with someone with a Nexis account to properly source that article.

hugs 12y ago

(Author here.) I agree with you, there are several factors at play in what happened to MakerBot. I believe Bre learned the wrong lesson -- going closed might have looked like the obvious solution to their drop in sales. But the one huge advantage MakerBot had over their competitors (and the cloners) was the good will and support from the open source community. With that support gone after going closed, MakerBot had to sink or swim on its own. I think they could have found a way to stay open while dealing with concerns of revealing future plans. For one, they could have kept the plans closed during development, but released all the plans on launch, forcing their competitors to play catch-up. As a user, I wouldn't necessarily need access to future designs for future models, but definitely would want designs to the current model that I owned. But anyway, I now buy LulzBot 3D printers, which are fully open. The latest version is TAZ 5.0. I can't tell, though, just by looking at the LulzBot online repo [1] if plans for future versions are also posted there ahead of official release. [1]: http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ http://download.lulzbot.com/TAZ/ [Edit] LulzBot is more awesome than I thought. They post the source for future versions that they're working on, too: http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html http://devel.lulzbot.com/TAZ/README.html "'Kauri' - EVT version of the next printer after TAZ 5.0"

hyperpallium 12y ago

And Osbourne probably preannounced so early because of the competition (to pre-empt users switching). Preannouncement and failure were correlated due to a common cause. OTOH MS vapourware has scuttled competitors. So it depends on your market power. Osbourne was against IBM and a disruptive tide.

xorcist 12y ago
Also Intel with Itanium.
jkestner 12y ago
Right - it was a move of desperation. Perhaps Osbourne could've marketed/distributed their way out. But it's hard to position yourself as the brand that no one gets fired for buying when someone's already got that spot. With MakerBot, another issue may be that the market is approaching saturation. As they're being eaten by cheaper competitors, they haven't been able to create a new market to grow into. I suppose the Replicator is an attempt to do that - how has that done?

hga 12y ago

Furthermore, Osborne himself in a front page Wall Street Journal article and/or interview admitted he lied about the cause of the company's demise. This section from Wikipedia casts further doubt on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect#The_Osborne_Myt... and I should really get around to working with someone with a Nexis account to properly source that article.