Economics of an Operating System
An O/S cost $150 m/yr to maintain &evolve
10%-15% COS can be spent or R&D, can be reduced by 3X by off-shore engineering
The selling price for software needs to be 1-1.5 billion.
For a high volume producer of 500K units, the selling price needs to be $2,000 - $3,000!
Bottom Line
Platforms sold in 10 million unit quantities win cost
Platform vendors must give away software
PCs are at performance par with five vanity micros
Platform vendors canít sustain vanity O/S & micros