Why should a consumer care if a vendor is profitable?
Because profitable vendors offer many advantages to consumers: 1) better support, 2) more R&D for future innovation, 3) better product (result of better r&d, better parts, etc).
I've been buying Apple products for about 25 years. They tend to hold up well, have good support, and continue to offer me great new innovations.
Have you ever tried getting help from a vendor that you know is selling something at 5% margins? Good luck to you...
The customers of our startup(s) also want us to be profitable, because they buy into our vision and want us to succeed, and if a company isn't profitable, it dies, and everyone involved (customers, owners, employees) loses.
>Have you ever tried getting help from a vendor that you know is selling something at 5% margins? Good luck to you..
Dell has incredibly good support (and if you want wipe your arse support, you can pay for it and get it). Their products are also shockingly well built. Seriously, Dell servers are just brilliantly put together.
They manage to combine small margins with a decent product. Everyone wins.
On the R&D front, Apple is a marginal investor in R&D. The iPhone 4 software is great, but the hardware -- it's a collection of off the shelf products. The same stuff that goes in that 2% margin no name device.
Which of course is true for Apple desktops as well. Apple once tried to do their own thing, and it didn't turn out so well. So now it's the same commodity parts that you would find in every discount bin white box brand.
Because profitable vendors offer many advantages to consumers: 1) better support, 2) more R&D for future innovation, 3) better product (result of better r&d, better parts, etc).
I've been buying Apple products for about 25 years. They tend to hold up well, have good support, and continue to offer me great new innovations.
Have you ever tried getting help from a vendor that you know is selling something at 5% margins? Good luck to you...
The customers of our startup(s) also want us to be profitable, because they buy into our vision and want us to succeed, and if a company isn't profitable, it dies, and everyone involved (customers, owners, employees) loses.