VMware Price Hike?
There's an old story about economics that I think my dad once told me. It seems
that Smirnoff vodka was losing market share to its lower-priced rival, Wolfschmidt,
back in the '60s. Instead of slashing its prices to match those of Wolfschmidt,
Smirnoff did something no one expected: It raised 'em. All of a sudden, Smirnoff
was a premium brand, and sales rose.
Apparently, VMware is the Smirnoff to Hyper-V's Wolfschmidt. Over in Europe,
VMware
is raising prices, at the exact same time that a nearly free Hyper-V is
coming to market.
That may work for a while, but in the long run, VMware is going to have to
react to Hyper-V pricing. Look at what happened with Netscape. It kept charging
for its browser even as IE was free. Hmm, didn't the Netscape browser business
ultimately disappear?
What would you do if you ran VMware? Send your corporate tactics to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 07/17/2008 at 1:15 PM