-----Original Message----- From: Jonathan M. Backus [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 10:04 AM To: 'John Pollard'; [log in to unmask] Subject: RE: [HP3000-L] The Real Story About HP's Announcement... I personally believe part of the marketing failure came from HP's decision to only market HP3000 computers, and advancements, to the installed base. If you have a closed audience of, say 60,000 customers (just a number out of the air), and you only target them with your limited marketing budget (advertising in HP centric publications, etc.), then you are going to loose ground. No matter how happy and loyal your customs are there will be some that fall away for a variety of reason (go out of business, merge, acquire a package only available on another platform, etc.) and if you do nothing to bring new customers to the table, your install base WILL shrink. Nuts, I left out point 3. 3.) Your implicit conclusion (shared by quite a few others), that the HP3000 would alive and thriving today if HP had "done its job" marketing, is an unproven, and I believe, shakey hypothesis - as well as being meaningless now that the deed has (not) been done. I believe that we should now stop beating this dead horse. * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *