I've been thinking for several months that I would be pleased if PSY started announcing licencing deals to allow the development the tech with royalties payable. Why? We hold the rights to a generational product but it could still be niche if we produce only a couple of products at a time.
For mine, I'd rather receive royalties of say 10% from 100 Mems creations than 2-3 products with 100% royalties
(This is an example - I am ignoring the UWA requirements). One of the reasons for this is we want to become the standard mems platform for many years and not only because we are superior. While there is nothing comparable (that we know of) around at the moment who knows what is waiting to spring up?
Hence my analogy to the Beta v VHS war:
I'm in danger of showing my age here but does anyone remember the Beta/VHS battle of the 70's and 80's? Beta (Sony) is still clearly recognised as the superior product so how did it lose to VHS (JVC)?
A snippet from trusty old Wikipedia on the topic:
"JVC, which designed the VHS technology, licensed it to any manufacturer that was interested. The manufacturers then competed against each other for sales, resulting in lower prices to the consumer. Sony was the only manufacturer of Betamax for over ten years and so was not pressured to reduce prices. Only in the late 1980s did Sony decide to license Betamax to other manufacturers...
By the time Sony made these changes to their strategy, VHS dominated the market, with Betamax relegated to a niche position...For thirty years JVC dominated the home market with their VHS, Super VHS and
VHS-Compact formats, and
collected billions in royalty payments." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war
I struggle to conceive the number of avenues that the company could travel down. Why not take a leaf out of JVC's book and licence the technology and collect the revenue?
If Sony hadn't worked so hard to protect their turf they could have competed if they'd been willing to share- they had the better product, other researchers would have found novel ways to extend tape duration and the competition would have been more even as prices would have been comparable. What would have stood out was Beta was a superior product but this advantage was lost to price and availability.
I like the idea of in-house product development but I like the idea of lots of companies developing the tech a whole lot more. Especially now that the first prototype is proven.
(20min delay)