Andrew Warren wrote:
>     As I said in a previous message, I believe that the ID-only fee,
>     which used to be $200, was raised to $1500 so as to narrow the
>     gap between it and the ID-with-testing fee of $2500.
>
>     Narrowing the gap encourages people to pay the $2500 and actually
>     test their devices before unleashing them on the world. Testing
>     is a good thing.
>
>     Charging less for Vendor IDs and making people "pay their own
>     way" by charging more for testing would DISCOURAGE people from
>     testing their devices.  That would be a bad thing.

Perhaps, but I strongly resent this holier than thou attitude and the fact
that the decision is not up to me.  I'm not advocating bad products, but how
much testing I chose to do is between me and my customers.

>     Think.  If we really wanted to keep you out, wouldn't we have
>     conspired with the USB-IF to charge a lot more than $1500?

I'm not saying its deliberate, only that they don't care and have no reason
to care from their point of view.

>     Well, you can't really blame us... If you're planning to sell so
>     few USB devices that you won't be able to afford the $1500 VID
>     fee, how much money can we expect to make from you on sales of
>     our microcontrollers?
>
>     Much as I'd like for everyone in the world to be using our
>     parts, it just isn't cost-effective to support thousands of 10-
>     to 100-unit/year USB customers when the same revenue can be made
>     from one medium-sized customer.

The opposite of this thinking got Microchip to where they are.  Applications
will crawl out of the woodwork when you reduce the cost to entry.  Most of
them will stay low volume, but a few will break thru to higher volumes.  It
also creates a general groundswell with more people versed in your products,
so that they feel comfortable with them when they do have a high volume
design.

Face it, most microcontrollers are rougly similar.  To get market share, you
need a lot of engineers already comfortable with your products when they
start on that high volume design.

For example, if I were starting a mid to high volume USB design today, I'd
probably use the new 18F parts and not waste a lot of time looking around,
assuming they can do the job.  You probably have parts that could do the job
too, but I'm already familiar with PICs, have my tool chain all set up, and
have a great comfort level with them.  On the other hand, my limited
experience with Cypress has been somewhat negative.

For a very high volume design you spend time looking around, you pick
whatever is $.01 cheaper than the next solution, and tool costs and comfort
don't matter.  However, those kind of designs are rare indeed.  Of all the
many dozens of microcontroller projects I've done, only was designed for
that kind of volume up front.  By the way, that one ended up using a PIC
10F204.


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