Actually, this seems to be a reason for corporations drive towards cheaper and cheaper manufacturing costs nobody ever mentions. Working in sales in Ireland for a competing IT organization, I know first hand the drive for ever more efficient supplychains and cheaper labor. Nobody is ever willing to pay for goods, and government departments are actually the worst in that regards. I can't even begin to list the amount of times where tenders are issued, asking for the best possible price and stating that at the end, an online 'auction' will be held between the 3 best vendors. This often ends up with massive contracts being sold at deeply negative margins, and somehow these losses need to be made up. The same goes for large multinationals and Joe public, whom firmly believes in the adagio that 'computers become cheaper year after year'.
This contnuous pricing pressure forces IT manufacturers to follow the sun and exploit the low-wage countries in order to stay in business. People have no problem shelling out â50K for a Merc which they'll drive one hour a day, but balk at having to spend â700 for a decent computer they will be operating eight hours a day and is their primary worktool. Basically, it's a self-fulfilling profecy. In a country like Ireland, the largest market for IT is the governmental sector, which in turns puts the most pricing pressure on manufacturers, causing the move towards low-wage countries and these massive redundancies. And then that same government comes crying about job losses?!?! In regards to support, the same goes. Keeping these jobs in industrialized countries costs money, even if tech support agents get paid a pittance it would be reflected in the pricing of the machine. While for most/. readers basic tech support would be done by themselves because of their intimate knowledge of the hard and software involved, I get the impression that many still forget they at best represent a mere 2-3% of the computer buying public; and that most average users are still quite computer illiterate. It's these users and their calls on the most basic of issues that cost a corporation money hand over fist with the volume of calls they generate.
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Actually, this seems to be a reason for corporations drive towards cheaper and cheaper manufacturing costs nobody ever mentions. Working in sales in Ireland for a competing IT organization, I know first hand the drive for ever more efficient supplychains and cheaper labor. Nobody is ever willing to pay for goods, and government departments are actually the worst in that regards. I can't even begin to list the amount of times where tenders are issued, asking for the best possible price and stating that at the end, an online 'auction' will be held between the 3 best vendors. This often ends up with massive contracts being sold at deeply negative margins, and somehow these losses need to be made up. The same goes for large multinationals and Joe public, whom firmly believes in the adagio that 'computers become cheaper year after year'. This contnuous pricing pressure forces IT manufacturers to follow the sun and exploit the low-wage countries in order to stay in business. People have no problem shelling out â50K for a Merc which they'll drive one hour a day, but balk at having to spend â700 for a decent computer they will be operating eight hours a day and is their primary worktool. Basically, it's a self-fulfilling profecy. In a country like Ireland, the largest market for IT is the governmental sector, which in turns puts the most pricing pressure on manufacturers, causing the move towards low-wage countries and these massive redundancies. And then that same government comes crying about job losses?!?! In regards to support, the same goes. Keeping these jobs in industrialized countries costs money, even if tech support agents get paid a pittance it would be reflected in the pricing of the machine. While for most /. readers basic tech support would be done by themselves because of their intimate knowledge of the hard and software involved, I get the impression that many still forget they at best represent a mere 2-3% of the computer buying public; and that most average users are still quite computer illiterate. It's these users and their calls on the most basic of issues that cost a corporation money hand over fist with the volume of calls they generate.