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[Off-topic] HP Prime is for students... What about professionals?
08-21-2017, 07:37 PM (This post was last modified: 08-22-2017 10:23 AM by matthiaspaul.)
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RE: [Off-topic] HP Prime is for students... What about professionals?
(08-20-2017 07:32 PM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  This means that the student market is the only truly relevant market anymore. As much as I'd like to see a new calculator for professionals, I acknowledge that the likely market size would be too small to make it profitable.
However, HP is already targeting multiple platforms at once (physical calculator in three revisions, PC emulator, adaptations to various smartphones), so it appears relatively easy to add yet another similar variant. A physical calculator based on the Prime, but with beeper, SD card support and (optional) support for standard batteries, and firmware-wise without Exam mode, but various additions in the software which might be unsuitable for a calculator for pupils, but are easy enough to add to not cause major development. If maintaining two similar hardware models would be cost-prohibitive, putting all the features into a single model and disable undesired features in exam mode would increase the price of the calculator only marginally. In the worst case, two different firmwares could be made available, a closed system with exam mode, and another more open one without exam mode, where experienced users could even start implementing system extensions, thereby accelerating development and adding features which would be uneconomically for HP to work on.

The market for "professionals" is certainly smaller, but many of them would also work as multiplicators, and they would also function as experienced bug-hunters and find bugs and shortcomings pupils will almost never find (unless run into them in an exam and completely ruin HP's image).

Greetings,

Matthias


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RE: [Off-topic] HP Prime is for students... What about professionals? - matthiaspaul - 08-21-2017 07:37 PM



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