Leaving the Desktop Market

[Jordan Hubbard]

On Apr 1, 2014, at 10:11 PM, Matt Olander <matt at ixsystems.com> wrote:

> This is like trying to predict automobile technology and dominant
> car-makers by 1905. There's always room for competition. Take a look
> at what's happening right now in the auto-industry. Tesla came out of
> nowhere 125 years after the invention of the automobile and is doing
> pretty well.

I think you’re kind of making my point for me, Matt. :-)

Tesla benefitted entirely from deep pockets on the part of its investors.  Over $160M went into starting the company, of which $70M came from the personal checking account of Elon Musk, the current visionary and CEO, and to quote the wikipedia page:  "Tesla Motors is a public company that trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol TSLA.[5] In the first quarter of 2013, Tesla posted profits for the first time in its ten year history.”

Yep, in other words, Tesla has been losing money for over 10 years and only just started turning a profit, after raising a “mere" $187M in investment and $485M in loans from the US DOE.  Your tax dollars at work!   On top of all that Tesla has only managed to make money at all by focusing exclusively the highest end of the luxury car market, where profit margins are also the highest (the first car, the roadster, would set you back $110,000).

Getting back to computer operating systems, it would make most readers of these lists choke on their Doritos to know how much Apple had to invest in Mac OS X before it became a viable desktop operating system and of course you’ve already seen folks screaming about how Apple gear is too expensive and they’ll never buy it.

You just don’t get a consumer-grade desktop Unix OS, or a practical all-electric sedan, without serious monetary investment and a luxury marquee to match, assuming you’d like to actually make any of that money *back*.

So, back to BSD on the desktop.   Anyone got a spare $200M they’d like to just throw away?  That’s what it’s going to take! :)

Don’t believe me?  Go ask someone who knows first-hand then.  Ask Mark Shuttleworth:  http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/why-ubuntus-creator-still-invests-his-fortune-in-an-unprofitable-company/

:-)

- Jordan