We commercialized a Mathematica add-on about 2 years ago and have been
quite disappointed with sales. I'm wondering if anyone here has
experience selling Matlab addons? Are they more successful?

From my point of view, .NET makes it just as easy to write a stand-alone
commercial application. So it that now the best route?

I can't help but thinking that the major CAS have taken the "eye
candy" route,

perhaps forgetting that users of such systems, on the
whole, are less awed by eye candy than your average Windows user.

Since
they are a much smaller crowd anyway, it stands to reason that eye candy
add-ons for CAS are not likely to be best sellers.

Also, if you regardless persist on that route, you might consider
using non-proprietary tools that works on other platforms, besides MS
Windows - chances are that the percentage of non-Windows users of CAS is
significantly higher than its general counterpart.

Mathematica's graphics have been backward for many years. I've had
hardware accelerated graphics for almost a decade and the latest
Mathematica (5.2) still cannot make any use of it.

I believe most CASs are in this situation, except for visualization
add-ons.

perhaps forgetting that users of such systems, on the whole, are less
awed by eye candy than your average Windows user.

Half of the reason I used Mathematica was because it could generate good
for-print graphics from code.

Since
they are a much smaller crowd anyway, it stands to reason that eye
candy add-ons for CAS are not likely to be best sellers.

Maybe. We've published a mathematical add-on for time-frequency and
presentation software. The time-frequency package sold 40x as well but I
still think there is a market for eye-candy add-ons.

Also, if you regardless persist on that route, you might consider using
non-proprietary tools that works on other platforms, besides MS Windows
- chances are that the percentage of non-Windows users of CAS is
significantly higher than its general counterpart.

Windows accounts for over half of Mathematica sales. Also .NET makes
application programming much easier than anything I know of under Linux.

We commercialized a Mathematica add-on about 2 years ago and have been quite
disappointed with sales. I'm wondering if anyone here has experience
selling Matlab addons? Are they more successful?

I can't help but thinking that the major CAS have taken the "eye
candy" route, perhaps forgetting that users of such systems, on the
whole, are less awed by eye candy than your average Windows user. Since
they are a much smaller crowd anyway, it stands to reason that eye candy
add-ons for CAS are not likely to be best sellers.

Also, if you regardless persist on that route, you might consider
using non-proprietary tools that works on other platforms, besides MS
Windows - chances are that the percentage of non-Windows users of CAS is
significantly higher than its general counterpart.

We commercialized a Mathematica add-on about 2 years ago and have been
quite
disappointed with sales. I'm wondering if anyone here has experience
selling Matlab addons? Are they more successful?

We commercialized a Mathematica add-on about 2 years ago and have been quite
disappointed with sales. I'm wondering if anyone here has experience
selling Matlab addons? Are they more successful?

From my point of view, .NET makes it just as easy to write a stand-alone
commercial application. So it that now the best route?

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 12:11:46 +0100, Jon Harrop wrote:
We commercialized a Mathematica add-on about 2 years ago and have been
quite disappointed with sales. I'm wondering if anyone here has
experience selling Matlab addons? Are they more successful?

From my point of view, .NET makes it just as easy to write a stand-alone
commercial application. So it that now the best route?

I can't help but thinking that the major CAS have taken the "eye
candy" route, perhaps forgetting that users of such systems, on the
whole, are less awed by eye candy than your average Windows user. Since
they are a much smaller crowd anyway, it stands to reason that eye candy
add-ons for CAS are not likely to be best sellers.

Also, if you regardless persist on that route, you might consider
using non-proprietary tools that works on other platforms, besides MS
Windows - chances are that the percentage of non-Windows users of CAS is
significantly higher than its general counterpart.

Here are some alternative opinions:
1. The success of Mathematica was (and is) largely dependent on eye-
candy.

"Eye candy" is relative. When I began using 2.2 in 1993 on a Next,
the graphics were impressive for the time.
But they havent improved much in 12+ years.

They are dowdy
compared to, say, a game console or a Maya animation.
Can you believe that the built-in contour plot does not accept labels?

I hope the visualization gap has been seriously addressed.

Why start from scratch when you could hook into the Matlab hype?

It would seem that you are trying to sell what you yourself like.
The fact that, by your own admission, you are not succeeding all that
well seems to imply that maybe that you are out of sync with your target
customers, or that your stuff is more expensive than it is worth: We all
like eye candy, but a reasonable price.

Windows accounts for over half of Mathematica sales. Also .NET makes
application programming much easier than anything I know of under Linux.

Well, here is your answer. If you can develop something that does
not depend on .NET and works under, say, Linux and Mac, besides MS
Windows, you might try and see whether a large chunk of the half you are
currently ignoring is more receptive than the MS Windows half.

D Herring wrote:
Why start from scratch when you could hook into the Matlab hype?

I can develop technical applications faster with .NET than with Matlab and
the market would be all Windows users rather than just Matlab users. Maybe
even wider with Mono.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
The F#.NET Journal
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/fsharp_journal/?usenet

One nice thing with Matab, which neither Maple nor Mathematica has, is
that one can develop a complete application in Matlab and with a nice user
interface Using Matlab GUIDE, and compile it to a standalone .exe, and
sell/distribute the .exe application, which can then be installed and run
on windows (or mac or linux depending) without the end user having to have
Matlab at all. (they do not even have to know or care to know that the app
was written in Matlab). The user does not need a license to run this app.

So, in a way, this is similar to a Java or .NET. But I would think that
developing 'scientific' apps would be easier in Matlab than in .NET due to
the large amount of readily available numerical/graphics functions in
Matlab.

As for Matlab/Mathematica, I know that at school, Matlab is much more used
than Mathematica. Even in the Mathematics departments, Matlab is much more
used than Mathematica. It seems Mathematica is more used in the physics
departments than elsewhere. Even though at my school we have Mathematica
installed on some PCs, I do not think I've seen any student using it so
far. All what I hear about at school is Matlab. Mathworks must be doing
something right