Online software buying not in gear - Quarterdeck
Although pundits have long predicted that the future of software buying would be in downloads, Quarterdeck CEO Curt Hessler said that logic has proven faulty.
"We move about 25,000 units our CleanSweep deletion utility a week and we find that only about one third of all downloads are successful," Hessler said in an interview with ZDNN in London this morning.
"I've spoken to Symantec and they say the same. It's not our fault, it's just that the download time remains long for most people and the line goes down a lot. We're about 60 per cent retail now and I'd bet that we'll be about 60 per cent retail in five years. Where online buying has worked is the McAfee model where you sell to corporates and the communications infrastructure is usually a T1 line."
The rest of a frank and wide-ranging interview with Quarterdeck's Hessler covering his company's future, the advent of component software, and the burgeoning demand for total-cost-of-ownership tools will appear later today on ZDNN.