Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:48:51 -0700
To: lancair.list@olsusa.com
From: Robert Dorsey <rmd-mcse@home.com>
Subject: Re: Garmin 530 boycott
In-Reply-To: <3AADB57F.883F0E14@regandesigns.com>
References: <20010311204612.LFGZ11114.mail2.rdc1.az.home.com@cx1149477-a>
Message-Id: <20010313234845.NPBA11114.mail2.rdc1.az.home.com@cx1149477-a>
Reply-To: lancair.list@olsusa.com
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>I do not think this policy has anything to do with lawsuits. 

As I stated earlier, I am not familiar with Garmin's stance, but there is A
LOT of concern about keeping lawsuits to a minimum. The corporation I work
for recently was hit for major $ from a lawsuit filed by the grieving
families of victims of an airline crash in S. America that was caused by
the crew typing in a wrong AP identifier code in, and promptly running onto
a mountain. Each product introduced has to fend for itself in the market,
and this includes cost of manufacturing due to possible litigation down the
road. Anything to ease the legal departments mind will pay off in the end
by lowering the market cost. I agree that the costs for supporting a few
very knowledgable customers is a lot less than for the masses, and I am
sure this would weigh on my mind when marketing a product such as this, but
I also give them (Garmin) credit that they would have been knowledable
enough to know that a lot of customers would get pissed off, especially if
a large part of their market is a community that is capable of building the
rest of their aircraft by themselves, if they are unable to handle
purchases direct. 

>Things are expensive because the market is small.

The majority of technology that is being seen in the "small" commercial
market is being paid for in a large part by the FAA, NASA, and everyone
that buys a commercial airline ticket. For fun you may pursue finding out
how much of each dollar spent in the commercial aerospace market goes to
protecting the producer / stockholders investments. The bad thing (or good
depending on you side of the fence) with large corporations is that the
people concerned about keeping the customers happy and knowing their needs
are different than the ones that get paid to keep a company solvent. 


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