RRC-Nano > General

Testing RRC-Nano

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Jan (Microbit):
Note that I was not specifically speaking about the RRC-Nano app, but more in general about apps and their pricing since I am not directly involved in the economic/business part being a software developer.

What you say is true, but I wanted to emphasis on the very different opinions people has on things. A person might consider the same app being worthless and at the same time another person might think it is the "best". A person might consider it having enough features, another too little but acceptable and yet another thinks it lacks that special feature making it a deal-breaker.

And as for some companies making big money on their apps it is a fact, but it is also as the pop band Abba once sang "The winner takes it all" as the vast majority of companies offering apps do that as a service and not as something which by itself "gives a positive result on the last line".

All in all, it is (IMO) always good to discuss things like this and being honest and frank is as I like to have it too  ;)

BTW, we seem to have been in the SW business approx for the same time  8)

sm2o:
Pricing is always difficult. One thing is for sure, we will never get the development cost back what ever price we set, the market is to limited, as you must have a RRC in the radio end. So the question is how much we are prepared to loose not earn. The price was set with the RRC-Micro as a starting point. From my own point of view, after using the Apps for 6 month now, I found the Apps much more useful than the RRC-Micro as you can use it everywhere, at your lunch break, when waiting for the bus or train, waiting at the dentist or for the wife outside the shopping centre, sometimes even on the bus or train etc. etc.... eg places when you never bring the Laptop or have the time to boot up a Laptop. And for me hamradio is 95% RX so it fit me perfect. My idea was that it was worth the about the same investment cost for the user as the RRC-Micro. If it had been pratical a montly charge of a few dollar for the RRC-Nano would probably have been a good solution if we compare with a service like Spotify which probably half of the Swedish population including me, pay USD 15/month with no doubt. I think we must start to see the APPs in general in a different way, and value the service they give and not just think they should be free or cost  one dollar just because they are Apps.

I will not say that our price policy is final, we may consider changing it, but so far we have focused on finishing the Apps for all the major brands at the same level. When going to next step of functionality we will give priority to the versions which have most licenced users and are most downloaded.

Happy New Year

/mike

dj0qn:
Thanks, Mike and Jan, this is an interesting discussion.

Pricing: note that my point is not that I think you are charging too much for profit reasons, but that the current price is too high
for your target users and I want you to at least break-even on the development costs. I have also been a ham for 46 years and
pretty much know how much (or little) hams are willing to spend for software only (i.e. without hardware, not like RRC-Micro),
especially an Android app. I firmly believe that you will sell significantly more licenses by targeting the price point more effectively.
Different than Jan, my 25 years in the software business has only been in the marketing and sales side. I have seen a lot of pricing
mistakes made over the years (including - or especially - my years at Microsoft) and I am just hoping you don't make a mistake. 

Features: One of the great things about ham radio is how broad the hobby is and how different interest are. The current feature set
certainly allows basic rag chewing or causal QSO's, no doubt. But in my case (as one example), 99% of my operating is DX pileups
and at least 50% CW. Without split operation or CW support, I can't really effectively use Nano as is. I have been using it a lot for
demos to illustrate how great the RemoteRig platform is, but that doesn't solve my operating use. Again, it it like pricing, one needs
to identify the target group or groups and prioritize the feature set to meet these first. Other features are for future updates.

I used to use a lot of focus groups for determining these things, which is not an option for Microbit. As a suggestion, perhaps a group
of trusted super-users can help you with these issue moving forward. If you need any support from my side, just let me know.

Happy holidays and happy New Year from my winter home in Florida.

73,
Mitch DJ0QN / K7DX

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