I started writing this in response to the following post in the thread about DM32 extensions of the 32sii, but it ends up more appropriate in this thread.
Boub65 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 28, 2022 6:55 pm
Now about the DM32 targeting a "new" population of users not already aficionados of HP RPN calculators...
I think it is very difficult, and I will explain my position..
DM41X price is 229 CHF
DM42 price is 199 CHF
DM41L price is 129 CHF
Based on the fact that DM32 will have a keyboard complexity similar to DM41X (two colors shift + alpha) I think that the price sould be similar to DM41X and will not be lower than DM42... so let suppose that the price is around 199 CHF...
Do you really think that a "non HP RPN aficionado, born after 1980" (up to 40 years old), will buy a calculator that has such a "gross" display (look at the WP43S display just to compare), with no way to display messages other than using an "equation" and a flag (weird isn't it ?), using .0-.9 for 10-19, reading A.01 and A,01 istead of A101 and A201, with limited complex, no matrix, etc.. etc... and for 199 CHF ? I really don't think so...
So, the price should be looooooower than 199CHF (at the level of DM41L or 149CHF maximum) or the "non HP RPN aficionados born after 1980" will just buy the extraordinary WP43S for just a bit more (249 CHF?).
May I remind you that the competition on this market segment is Casio at 50$ or Ti at 100$ with all the "power" features that seam not "simple" enought for DM32!
I don't speak about us (HP RPN aficionados) of course, that will buy any thing that SM throws at us...
Just my 0.02c about adressing a new market segment.
To a limited extent, the users of the DM32 might be a bit younger and/or a bit less hardcore enthusiasts. The 32sii had more such users than the 42s originally. And I think that those who got started on an RPL calculator, never had 4 level RPN, but are curious about the old way and/or wants something pocketable might be very interested. Not too sure how many those people are but it's at least me.
My story:
I was born in 1990, so I might be the youngest person active on these forums.
In 2006, when I started the part of education where we needed a graphing calculator, the school I went to tried to get away from TI and ended up with some absolutely awful Sharp ones. I nicknamed mine "Puckot", which translates to "the idiot". It eventually stopped working altogether. So I went on the internet and searched for the best calculator ever made. I may be a bit of a nerd about any tools and any technology, and I may have had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I found out about HP calculators and RPN, as one does when searching for that, and I was intrigued. A friend of my dad had what I believe was a 42s, possibly a 28s, and I was allowed to borrow it for one weekend including the manual - "absolutely needs to be back Monday morning, I can't do my job without it!" - and I was convinced. So I ordered my first HP, a 50g, probably in the spring of 2007.
I sought out a used 32sii in good condition a few years ago, because the 50g is large and sometimes I want a physical but pocketable calculator. I specifically did not want a 42, even though the DM42 was already a thing (but it was early days of that), because I would just get angry at that one for not being a 50g (and risk sinking loads of time into porting newRPL onto DMCP in order to sort of but not quite fix that). I was also curious about the programming model before RPL, it seemed like it might be easier to grasp than RPL programming which still hasn't clicked with me. But I most definitely did not want to read my program steps in terms of keycodes!
Finally, in practice, I find it rather problematic that I see only the x register when calculating and only one line at a time when programming. To me the DM32 will indeed be the friendliest handheld calculator ever made that is RPN keystroke programmable. Anything that doesn't show the complete stack is inherently harder, less friendly.
Conclusion? If some nerd is curious about all these calculators, other than free apps, the DM32 will be what I recommend as a starting point. Unless graphing is needed.
Finding a new market segment:
The price makes it
nerds only, but I do think everything but the cheapest possible or the same one that everyone else has is unavoidably
nerds only when it comes to physical calculators - RPN or otherwise! Trying to produce the cheapest possible does not seem fit for SwissMicros. The only way to find a new market is to find new nerds, to target the nerds that are not yet calculator nerds. Such as I was when I first found out about HP and found my way to the 50g. And the DM32 is not going to do that.
One way to do that would be to market the 43, when it comes, as
"allegedly the best calculator ever made". I haven't looked into it closely enough yet but I might be the one saying it. It depends on whether it can do units and custom menus good enough, this to me is the killer features of RPL that makes the 50g stand head and shoulders above everything that isn't RPL (and the larger screen makes it better than the rest of them, to me). But if I don't say it is the best calculator ever made, someone else will, so that marketing line will work. Then that line and the product needs to be shown to the nerds that will take an interest. Send one to the EEVBLOG, one to Matt Parker (Stand-Up Maths), get one to show up on Numberphile or Computerphile somehow, send one to Grant Sanderson (3blue1brown), one to Jeff Geerling, one to LTT, one to Adam Savage, and so on.
Another way to find new nerds is to specifically target some of them. The makers that do hardware tinkering can be easily targeted by making tinker-friendly hardware, especially in combination with a feature set targeted towards low-level programming. Don't emulate the old, it'd be much better to sleuth those forums a bit and figure out what features those users might have use for. Good programming features, bit twiddling, serial communication, logic analyzer software, hardware hackability are my guesses - I think such a device would be an easy sell to that crowd. This needs both a targeted product and some marketing legwork, going on those forums and being part of those communities, so that they listen when you say you have something interesting to show. It is said by at least one marketing expert that I know of (Jason Stoddard) to be the most effective form of marketing available today: to actually interact with the target customer group. And it makes a lot of sense.
A third way to attract some new nerds is to introduce something entirely new. I think I have one idea: a debug mode with the program code on one half of the screen and the stack and variables in use on the other half of the screen. That can not only single step through the program but also continuously step through it at a set pace, or make use of breakpoints. Like an IDE for RPN programming - in your pocket! Cool.