[chbot] Heard about the FTDI caper?

[Charles Manning]

Oh I love the broken analogies that we're seeing here.

There is nothing preventing anyone else going through the process that FTDI
did: get their own VID:PID, write their own drivers and have them added to
Microsoft's driver data base. This does, of course, take time, effort and
cost money.

The car analogy is broken. A more fitting one would be that the after
market parts were marked "Genuine Toyota" and that all service should be
provided by Toyota. When Toyota detects this, they stop providing service
for these parts. People then get annoyed with Toyota when they should
really be getting annoyed with the part provider.


I do agree that many of these peripherals are overpriced when compared to
what else is on offer. Why use a Microchip MPC2515 for CAN connectivity
when you can get a cheaper micro that does the job better, for less?


On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 10:07 PM, Mark Atherton <markaren1 at xtra.co.nz>
wrote:

> Well observed, and well said !
>
>
> At 09:44 p.m. 27/10/2014, you wrote:
>
>> FTDI must be desperate - it appears that their only competitive advantage
>> over the clone parts are that they own the PID:VID combination and can
>> therefore control the default driver.
>>
>> If somebody else has reverse-engineered and reimplemented their IP in
>> their own custom silicon, allowing it to be 'good enough' to be a
>> lower-cost drop in replacement, then their product has become a commodity.
>> The only long-term way to beat the clones is either to price them off of
>> the market, or win on quality - and bricking 'clone' parts does not equal
>> quality of your product.
>>
>> If they weren't overpriced for what they delivered, then nobody would
>> have put the energy into making a clone.  As it stands the makers of the
>> clones will only need to get their own PID:VID, and then you have an equal
>> part in the market, that is significantly cheaper, and is no longer a
>> 'grey/black market' part.
>>
>> Are the FTDI parts overpriced? In 1000x quantity on Digikey, a FT232 is
>> $3.29 for comparison you could get a PIC18F14K50 microcontroller with a USB
>> 2.0 interface for under $1.60 direct in 1000x quantity direct from
>> Microchip.
>>
>> If they just halved the price of the parts then they could have killed
>> the clones overnight....
>>
>> Mike
>>
>
>
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