Wild speculations about the "other" factors

I've chosen to create a new thread as this is about
wild speculation, unlike other current threads that
are based on facts and conclusions drawn out of those.

This is about something we do not have data samples
about, and can only speculate. I'm not claiming that
anything in here is true or backed up with facts, and
I agree that those speculations don't need to be done
outside the newsgroups (IOW: No, nothing for my
roadmap document that's receiving so much public
attention right now).

Ok, I hope this is enough of an disclaimer.

We've meanwhile been told several times that neither us,
the community, nor QC numbers, the component market,
nor the Borland Technology Partners are representative
for Borland's revenue on IDE products. While in all those
sources, the customers using native code are a clear
majority (depending on the source taken, in the range of
80-90%, even more for community feedback), we are told
that there are "other" factors, possibly more important
than us.

Obviously Borland won't tell us what those other
factors are, so it's time for some wild speculation.

Jokingly, in another thread I already said I find it
very strange that Borland is claiming that there is a
very large group weighting more than those customers
represented in data samples mentioned, but that this
group is not leaving behind any traces whatsoever
somewhere, and therefore must be an Alien race shopping
directly in Scotts Valley, not leaving traces on earth
after that.

My thoughts were that if there is a bunch of customers
generating more revenue than "us", it must be visible
in one way or another.

I've come up with a few theories, maybe others can think
of more:

1.) Enterprise customers - maybe there are a few VERY
big enterprise customers that buy thousands worth of
Delphi copies through a direct channel at Borland.

What's strange about this theory is, that those still
should show some sign. Let's assume that those
enterprise customers exist - if they'd use Delphi
to create programs they then sell to the public, we
should know about it - after all, we've got a list
of "famous" Delphi-written programs. And while there
really are some impressive ones, like Skype (it's
cool the Win32 version is still did not get ported
away from Delphi even if they were in need for
versions for Linux and MacOS!), I'm not aware of
any real real big products by enterprise customers.
Say, Photoshop, Microsoft Office ;), Acrobat or
something of that size.
So, that would probably only leave in-house
and specialized development. Maybe there are big
enterprise customers using BDS with thousands of
developer seats to develop inhouse applications.

What I also find strange about it is that we should
have seen "We are looking for 100s of Delphi developers"
job adverts somewhere by big companies. I have never
seen something like this, Delphi job adverts I come
accross usually are for mid-size businesses.

I have to admit however, that indeed is quite a lot
of professional training available for .NET Delphi
developers. Input from that side would be interesting.

There is another thing: While stock market stuff
isn't exactly my cup of tea, from what I've read the
IDE products in total right now make up about 7% of
Borland's 300M yearly revenue (attention, very rough
numbers, if anyone with better ones could please step in,
thanks). So probably the revenue generated per Delphi
version is under 20M, and as it includes Java, possibly
much smaller. That's not much. That's not much at
all. It probably means the number of BDS copies sold
world-wide probably is a small 5-digit number. Actually
the number is so small that I'm now confused and first
wish someone else who has followed those earning calls
etc to step in ;)

Anyway. What I wanted to say is: The BDS sales numbers
are SO small that I absolutely don't see where the
enterprise customers fit in here. If there really
are enterprise customers buying gigantic numbers of
Delphi copies the revenue generated should be much
higher. Else there wouldn't be much copies left that
"we", the "normal" customers could be buying. ;)
Also, a real big enterprise customer could possibly
find it cheaper to simply buy instead DTG completely
instead of a few thousand Delphi copies ;)... which
leads us to..

2.) Warning, extremely unfunded wild thought without
any base whatsoever here:
What if it's an enterprise customer who is simply buying the
DTG right now so they can dictate their needs to them?
That indeed would be an "other" factor and a good reason
to no longer care about us customers.

3.) Vision. Borland may think that all we customers
don't know what we really want and are wrong, and that
each and everyone of us will in a few years thank them
that they've dropped native code and forced us to got
to .NET.

Well, thoughts on this? Could you think of more "other"
factors?

Simon



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Wild speculations about the "other" factors
    ... Delphi copies through a direct channel at Borland. ... Also the segment with the largest portion of Delphi ... sales and revenue every release since v1 client/server edition. ... so you are saying that the number of enterprise customers with up ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Wild speculations about the "other" factors
    ... Delphi copies through a direct channel at Borland. ... revenue every release since v1 client/server edition. ... so you are saying that the number of enterprise customers with up ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Wild speculations about the "other" factors
    ... Enterprise customers - maybe there are a few VERY ... Delphi copies through a direct channel at Borland. ... have seen "We are looking for 100s of Delphi developers" ... job adverts somewhere by big companies. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: Delphi 8 ... is it a worthy investment?
    ... > much on Enterprise customers, most of the advances in recent Delphi ... > versions have been targeted at needs of Enterprise developers (say ... The whole new IDE of Octane is intended to improve the IDE ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)