Today I counted the number of downloads of pVoice since version 2.1 was released. 298 individual people downloaded 2.1, and the betas of 2.2 that have been released since then have been downloaded 111 times. That's 309 downloads in 4 months.
Now, if I had been charging $100 per copy of pVoice 2.1, I would have made $ 29,800 in 4 months. That's a tempting amount of money...Am I a fool to give it away? I think not.
First of all, there's no certainty that those people would have downloaded pVoice if they would have had to pay for it. Actually, I think most of them wouldn't have downloaded it if I charged them.
Second, if people really want to use pVoice the way it's supposed to be used (as an AAC tool), they will still have to buy a decent computer. They have enough costs to make.
That makes me think. If every vendor of AAC solutions would just try to make their money based upon hardware and service, they can still make more than enough money. The hardware and services are the most expensive parts of an AAC solution. They could just concentrate on offering the best service for their products and developing a wider range of hardware to run their software on. I think there should be a wider variety of hardware anyways. It's hard to find good hardware that's lightweight, shockproof, water-resistant and accessible. And if you find something, the pricing is not really what you'd like. Such a PC usually costs more than $8000. Given the current pricing of 'normal' PC hardware, that's an outrageous amount of money...
Anyway, don't worry, pVoice won't become a commercial business.
