Re: Hi-Tech Software bought by Microchip - no more other compilers
- From: Mike Harrison <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:39:22 +0100
On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:55:11 +0100, Nobody <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:57:45 +0800, who where wrote:
I'm not expecting them to give away the Hi-Tech product for free.
(snip)
Why not?
Because they charge $500 for C18, and the Hi-Tech compiler is supposedly a
better product (why else would they have bought it?)
That surely is the optimum business model. Let's face it, their core
business is selling silicon. If giving away the tools (which cost them
incrementally nothing per copy) gains/retains buyers and user base, they
are in front. At the moment users are migrating away from Microchip in
numbers, contributed to by the tools situation.
I can't see the cost of tools being a significant factor for major
customers. Even if they charge nothing for the software, the time it
takes for an engineer to get up to speed on the platform will equate to a
few grand in salary.
OTOH, I wouldn't expect that Microchip earns a significant proportion of
their revenue from tools. I'm wondering if they do it to maintain some
modest barriers to entry, to give their more valuable customers some
advantage over the mom-&-pop outfits.
Microchip have always supported all sizes of customer, and this is probably a significant reason for
their success. ISTR reading a while ago that no one customer represents more than 5% of their
business.
Unlike other MCUs that were designed for high-level language friendliness (ARM, AVR etc.), the
Microchip parts absolutely need a compiler that is heavily tweaked to suit the architecture to
produce reasonable code, so they are more dependent on commercial/customised compilers than their
competition, who can get by with GCC and get reasonable performance.
Their current policy of supplying a free, highly inefficient compiler, as opposed to something like
a fully optimising but code-size limited one is a really good way to put off potential new customers
when they evaluate it, get poor results and dismiss their product in favour of the competition.
.
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