Forums › Forums › iLive Forums › Archived iLive Discussions › Discounts on MixApp? › 2395
>The iPad app being free only sacrifices surface sales if you have that size budget to begin with.
I don’t agree, this is the same as saying the rack is too expensive.
Lets use some round numbers, but lets say..
If a Rack costs $2900 and the iPad software costs $100 then a combo costs $3000, then what you are saying is the rack is overpriced by $100 and should really be priced at $2900 because the mixpad software is not worth anything.
If the rack cost $3100 and came with a free iPad license, you would still buy it. In the scheme of things, its nothing. Its just your perception of value is being distorted by other manufacturers who offer free software. What they are saying is that by offering free software, their software is worth nothing and has no value.
The iLive is so far and away advanced over the other systems you mention that it can’t even be compared. The minuscule cost of the iPad software relative to the rack cost and your total investment in sound equipment in comparison with the competitive products is nothing.
If people want to buy x32’s and rolands, by all means go for it but I suspect these are people who are being ‘sold’ a product as opposed to people who are making good decisions themselves.
There are far more considerations in console purchase than price, one major thing is upgrade path. The Roland and X32 don’t really have scalability and upgrade paths while the iLives do. If you don’t need an upgrade path thats fine, but if you do, its worth paying a little more for.
The A&H guys aren’t stupid, pricing is well thought out, competitive and relative and has incentives for moving up the upgrade path.
If you price something cheap, then it implies it is lower quality.
I would be pretty upset if my considerable investment in consoles was compared to the X32 and roland line and marketed to the same people that buy those systems. I don’t think A&H are in the volume consumer MI market. They are in the next tier up marketing quality, reliability and professionalism in the mid to high end market.
The other consideration is the iLive is fairly complex and high end beast. I’m not sure A&H would want the support overhead of dealing with a whole pile of MI users who do something stupid and make mistakes setting up their systems resulting in a poor perception of the product. There have been quite a few posts over the last few weeks by users who clearly have no idea what they are doing and probably should not have been sold an iLive. Maybe they would have been better off with a roland or X32 that has less complexity and flexibility and less possibility of doing something stupid.
I’m not trying to justify being ripped off, but I don’t feel ripped off. The prices are very reasonable for the product quality and support being offered. As soon as you get into discounting, you alter the entire perception of your products.
A good example is Samsung, they used to be known as a low cost, low quality manufacturer. Then they started improving quality putting their prices up and it changed the whole perception of the brand.
Price says a lot about a brand.
