Every product has been through this generic cycle. The product is introduced and purchased by the early adopters, the product gets market acceptance and there is a (steep) climb in sales. After that the market gets satisfied so there are only replacements sales (and after that the product gets replaced so sales will die:)
I've written a couple of simulation programs using stock models for consumer electronics. Historical sales figures were available for Europe and every single one showed the same new sales / replacement sales curve.
Also have a look at the PSION industrial devices (workabout for example). Basically the same hardware as the PSION 3 but they can be expanded with printers,scanners etc. They are also availabe with strong casings (drop them from 1 meter on a concrete floor and they still work:) The downside is the programming. You can use OPL (sort of basic), C on the industrial devices or C++ on the Revo and series 5. The leerning curve for the C(++) framework is pretty steep.
For the tenants in my building (students mostly) I wrote a database driven website. The content of the pages, including caption and index name are entered into a database. At the moment this is done in Dutch and English. HTML tags are included in this content. The nice thing is you have the two language version side by side on your screen while you enter / change the content so it's easy to keep them synchronised.
Every night the actual web pages are generated from the database using templates for a frames and non frames version. The images for the index are also automatically generated. The downside is you still have to duplicate the complex layout stuff for both languages. But since our layout isn't complicated it's no problem (besides simple is beautifull:).
The actual site and on my own site you can find two screenshots of the editor.
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Every product has been through this generic cycle. The product is introduced and purchased by the early adopters, the product gets market acceptance and there is a (steep) climb in sales. After that the market gets satisfied so there are only replacements sales (and after that the product gets replaced so sales will die :)
I've written a couple of simulation programs using stock models for consumer electronics. Historical sales figures were available for Europe and every single one showed the same new sales / replacement sales curve.
Also have a look at the PSION industrial devices (workabout for example). Basically the same hardware as the PSION 3 but they can be expanded with printers,scanners etc. They are also availabe with strong casings (drop them from 1 meter on a concrete floor and they still work :)
The downside is the programming. You can use OPL (sort of basic), C on the industrial devices or C++ on the Revo and series 5. The leerning curve for the C(++) framework is pretty steep.
For the tenants in my building (students mostly) I wrote a database driven website. The content of the pages, including caption and index name are entered into a database. At the moment this is done in Dutch and English. HTML tags are included in this content. The nice thing is you have the two language version side by side on your screen while you enter / change the content so it's easy to keep them synchronised.
:).
Every night the actual web pages are generated from the database using templates for a frames and non frames version. The images for the index are also automatically generated.
The downside is you still have to duplicate the complex layout stuff for both languages. But since our layout isn't complicated it's no problem (besides simple is beautifull
The actual site and on my own site you can find two screenshots of the editor.