Talk:Marketing

Problems with corporate marketing

Ati and NVidia cripple their graphic card drivers in order to sell the same product at a higher cost to a different type of customer. This is justified in corporate marketing terms because the business product entails higher support and development expense, as well as the customer not being concerned about the high cost, for various reasons. These companies are of course legally entitled to such product decisions in the competitive environment, which will increase turnover and keep the shareholders happy. It is worth noting that both companies mentioned have decided to pursue the same strategy, therefore leaving the customer no alternative when it comes to choosing the higher-priced product.

We believe that it is not sustainable to segment markets in ways that restrict the choices and freedom of the citizens or in any way "cripple" the quality or durability of the product or service. Even if that would affect the financial bottom line and would result in lower turnover. Surely there are other ways to cover support and development expenses, in a way that optimises reuse within the companies (not to mention the whole industry) and is based on respecting the freedom of the customer.

Quote

In order for product positioning to have the desired effect, they use an "independent" label (FireGL instead of Radeon) and modify the card's BIOS and a bit of microcode in the chip. 
This means that users cannot run FireGL drivers on a Radeon card, and vice versa. The drivers themselves have built-in "artificial brakes", meaning that a gaming card can never achieve 
decent values in the OpenGL arena - that's reserved for workstation cards. As an aside, both ATi and Nvidia use the same process to position their individual products.

So what justifies the enormous price difference? The majority of the costs result from customer support and driver development. 
No OpenGL workstation user is allowed to be left alone with his problems, where it's the complete opposite for the gamer. 
Additionally, it takes a long time before OpenGL drivers can be certified as "stable", so the manufacturers pass these increased costs on to the customer.
Why does no-one complain? That's easy: workstations for engineers and designers make a considerable contribution to creating value in the production process. 
Procurement costs are of little importance, since the workstations are a business expense, and mostly pay for themselves within a short time.

Source

Tomshardware