Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 21st Aug 2009 18:46 UTC
Another week, and another set of filings in the Apple vs. Psystar case. And yes, the case continues to get grittier and grittier. Last week Apple accused Psystar of destroying evidence, and this week Psystar is kicking it up a notch. The depositions of key Apple employees are currently under way, and August 14, it was Phil Schiller's turn. According to Psystar, Schiller was "wholly unprepared and unwilling to testify". At the same time, Apple has suddenly told the courts it will no longer seek recovery of lost profits from Psystar, because that would require Apple to give out its profit margins - and Apple doesn't want to do that.
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Member since:
2005-09-22
I would imagine that thier profit margin was in fact much lower (no actual figures btw, more intuition). R&D needs to be taken into account when calculating profit margin. The "cost" to produce a piece of software encompases not just developing the software it's self but also all of the R&D $$ invested up front by a company to create the technology the product uses.
Hypothetically, lets say that Sun creates Solaris and spends $1M on developers to code, test, etc., and then they sell it for a while calculating thier profit margins as a percentage of their $1M investment vs the $ they sell it for and the # of copies they sell. Then let's say they take all thier profits from Solaris and re-invest it into researching and developing security and auditing features. If the next release of Solaris, let's call it Trusted Solaris, includes all of this, then that previous profit spent on R&D is now factored in to calculating the profit margin on Trusted Solaris.
R&D definitly isn't free and is a key factor in calculating profit margins.