Analyzing competitors - In this case Real Software

Mark Talluto userev at canelasoftware.com
Tue Mar 22 18:19:34 EST 2005


On Mar 22, 2005, at 2:09 PM, Frank D. Engel, Jr. wrote:

> 12% of 50,000 is 6,000.
> 13% of 50,000 is 6,500.
>
> So, about 6,000 to 6,500 users of RB are VB transferees; good for 
> them.  One less Microsoft program for them to deal with.
>
> Does anyone find this information useful?
 From a marketing perspective, the answer is a strong yes.  That was the 
point of my original post.  I did not specify I admit.  Being a fan of 
Rev, I always notice their competition when mentioned around the net or 
in printed materials.  Without deep knowledge of the inner workings of 
Rev the company, one can only guess.

>
> A much more interesting question:  how many Rev users are transferees 
> from other Xtalk languages, such as HyperCard and SuperCard?
>
> Add to this: how many have gone from Xtalks to RB, from Xtalks to VB, 
> from VB to Xtalks, etc.
>
> Putting these various pieces of info together may prove rather 
> interesting.  Would anyone know how to use it for something 
> constructive?  Marketing, perhaps, but otherwise, hmm...

Assuming Rev is probably the leading xtalk, focusing on other xtalks 
would provide less useful marketing information.  Not sure how it 
stacks up to ToolBook in user count though.  The whole point is to look 
at your competitors that are creating waves and see how they are doing 
it.  Not knowing how many users there are using Rev makes it difficult 
to know what is important to Rev.  Not knowing the demographics of 
their user base also puts us at a disadvantage as well.

6K - 6.5K of VB transferees would be an important number to Rev.  I 
wonder how many of those users would have switched to Rev instead of RB 
had a translator like that been created for Rev.  Is this feature 
important to me?  Nope.  I am just curious.

If you are creating a product for sale, do you know what your 
competition is offering?  If you do not know their product well enough 
to teach it to someone else, you are truly missing out marketing and 
development wise.  I have a vertical market commercial app that has 
about 10 competitors.  That is a large number in an ever shrinking 
global market.  We were probably the fifth one to market.  With proper 
analyzation of every competitor we had, we were able to position 
ourselves to be the leader.

It all starts with something as small as my very first comment in the 
original post.  There may be no real point to this thread.  I just find 
it interesting and useful to analyze my competition.  Maybe someone 
else will find it interesting and useful too.


Mark Talluto
-- 
CANELA Software
http://www.canelasoftware.com



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