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| Newer page: | version 3 | Last edited on Sunday, July 4, 2004 12:55:15 am | by AristotlePagaltzis | Revert |
| Older page: | version 2 | Last edited on Friday, July 25, 2003 10:20:13 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
@@ -1,5 +1,13 @@
-An [Acronym] for __F__ear __U__ncertainty __D__oubt.
+An [Acronym] for __F__ear,
__U__ncertainty,
__D__oubt.
-The idea
is to scare
your customers into choosing
your product by telling them how
the opposition
won't be around in 6 months etc
.
+It
is a marketing tactic used against superior competitors in a weaker market position, such as by telling
your customers that the competition is inferior, that the next version of
your product that will be released tomorrow will have all the same features and more, that
the competitor
won't be around in 6 months, and other half- and blatant untruths more. The goal is to make people insecure about your competitor and give them the feeling that betting on you is the safe option. The first company to employ [FUD] was [IBM]; Amdahl is credited with coining the phrase after he left [IBM] to start his own company. Funny how times change
.
-See FearUncertaintyDoubt for details
and examples.
+A good example of is MicrosoftCorporation's recent document called CompetitiveComparisons,
and their recent "Get the facts" campaign. Other
examples that try to discredit [Linux] are listed on the MicrosoftQuotes page.
+
+See also: LinuxFudDispelled
+
+!! Historical examples
+
+Digital Research launched their [DR-DOS], which was better and cheaper than [MS-DOS] 5 and received favourable reviews all around. [Microsoft] then released a beta of Windows 3.1 that produced a warning message when run under [DR-DOS], and announced [MS-DOS] 6, which would do [DR-DOS] did and more. In reality, [MS-DOS] 6 was vapourware at the time, and it is questionable whether the materialized product was better than [DR-DOS], but everyone was saying that [DR-DOS] is great but you may have problems running Windows on it. Together with a dealer package designed to make it financially advantageous to offer [MS-DOS] with Windows, [DR-DOS] was dead in the water. This may have been the making of the [Microsoft] monopoly.
+
+AMSTRAD was a UK consumer electronics manufacturer who product design rationalization allowed them to sell decent electronics at rock-bottom prices. When they decided to launch a range of home consumer [PC]s, they found a 35W [PSU] to be sufficient even with a HardDisk and tape streamer attached (low end [PC]s of the time usually came with twin floppy drives), so they decided to upgrade the monitor [PSU] and supply the entire computer from it. Since there was no [PSU] in the computer case and its electronics only dissipated about 20W, AMSTRAD PCs required no fan in the case and so were quieter. They were a great success -- so great that they began to find their way into offices where equivalent 'traditional' models typically cost 50-100% more and made a lot of noise. So the [FUD] spread: "The AMSTRAD has no cooling fan! With a hard disk it'll melt! Your crashes are because your AMSTRAD is overheating!" That was easily refuted since AMSTRADs worked well, and the case would be cool even after using them all day. New customers were still getting scared away because AMSTRAD PCs had no fan when all others did. So in the end AMSTRAD fitted useless fans in the back of the case where the PSU normally goes, and everybody was happy. People in the know cut the wires to the fan and never had any problems, but the majority just accepted the constant fan noise as a necessity
.
