Voyager line; HP prices in the mid-1980's: Message #7 Posted by Karl Schneider on 19 Nov 2005, 4:42 p.m., in response to message #1 by John Nguyen
John Nguyen posted:
Quote:
I recently came into possession of a "Users' Library Software Catalog for the HP-41/HP-71/HP-75" from May 1986...
(and, quoting from it):
"Effective February 1, the prices of four Hewlett-Packard handheld calculators have been reduced by an average of 22 percent. Reduced manufacturing and material costs allow HP to pass the savings on to customers.
"Reductions on the four models are: HP-11C from $75 to $56; HP-15C from $120 to $99; HP-41CV from $225 to $175 and HP-41CX from $325 to $249."
For context, I bought my HP-15C in November 1983 from a US university bookstore for $109. (I don't know if that was a sale discount.) Mail-order prices also often ran lower than manufacturer's prices.
The large difference in HP's price between the HP-11C and the HP-15C might explain why the 11C was manufactured until 1989, just as the 15C was. The HP-11C was a fine product with excellent documentation. But, let's face it -- the 15C eclipsed the 11C so completely only a year after the latter's introduction, so as to render it superfluous except to occupy a price niche.
The 15C looked virtually identical to the 11C; a trained eye was practically needed to tell 'em apart without the logo. The 15C offered a vastly-expanded repertoire of useful advanced functionality, was no less easy to use, and was a bit better organized, as well. Only a substantial cost savings could justify the purchase of an 11C over a 15C, but it may not have seemed to some would-be 15C buyers that they were actually getting more with the 15C.
So, why did the 11C serve as the entry-level model? Because a void was left after the HP-10C was discontinued in 1984.
IMO, it was a good idea for HP to provide a simpler-looking scientific in the Voyager line, with only one shift key and less functionality. However, they probably "missed the mark" on the 10C by making it a crippled and crummy programmable, instead of a fuller-featured non-programmable.
Perhaps HP considered it unthinkable to release a scientific non-programmable, after they had developed and implemented Continuous Memory, LCD's, and low-power circuits. However, the 10C's crude programming paradigm from the HP-55 and small memory (10 registers/70 bytes) rendered progamming nearly useless, even though most of the thin user's manual was devoted to it. The "programming" usurped 10 scarce keyboard positions, which could have been dedicated to useful functions.
So, the 10C -- the original low-end Voyager -- was as poorly-designed as the high-end 15C was excellently developed. If the 10C had been a coherent low-end model, it might have continued to occupy that niche in place of the 11C, which could then have been dicontinued after prices were reduced across the board. That would have left only the clearly and visibly more-advanced 15C as the higher-priced alternative for those who wanted programmability and the advanced functionality to exploit it.
Who knows how many sales the 11C "stole" from the 15C, particularly from 1985-1989? I don't know the figures, but this certainly seems like a case in which misguided product design -- perhaps driven by marketing -- had some consequences.
-- KS
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