Re: advice on selecting new PCB design package

A few other factors that will influence market penetration for "newcomers"
like gEDA.

The larger EDA compnaies sell their product on teh golf course and dining &
wining at corporate level.

They attend trade shows, advertise etc., so mainatain a high visibilitty and
thus credibility to teh corporate muck a mucks.

They provide instant phone based tech support

The list can go on and on.

Without real financial backing for proper marketing, any new package may as
well resign itself to servicing hobbyist and micro to small scale commercial
users.

If you read the trade rags, you'll see that EDA revenues have been pretty
disappointing lately in general. Most of the players are offering deep
discounts to attract new users, cuttign even more into their potential
revenue. I imagine that most of them rely on annual
maintenance/subscriptions as their main source of revenue these days. It
will be extremely difficult for a new player to siphon some of that business
away without at least SOME pretensions of being a real company that can
provide critical support on demand, and has some staying power.

The only real new recent player I'm aware of is probably Pulsonix, and I
have absolutely no idea how well theyr'e doing financially.

My 2 cents,

Lukas


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