Quote:
Originally Posted by mgmueller
What is giving you this impression?
In Germany, when on the train, I experience exactly the opposite.
I assume, the hobbyist, students and academics you describe mostly would be of the younger generation below 25, 30 tops.
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Not necessarily, no.
In audio, the "golden ears" hobbyists skew older, ditto for film photography.
Hobbyists doesn't mean dilettantes or explorers, rather the opposite: committed and dedicated users.
As for what gives me the impression that it is a hobbyist market: a tech product category that after seven years of continual development has only captured 3% of the market and still exists must be surviving off committed and dedicated hobbyists. The old laser disk market was just like that: it was a solid technology that really pleased its owners, who kept it afloat for years while the mainstream went with tape, and stayed with it even well into the DVD era.
And the impression that a good portion of the supporting market is students and academics, that comes from the demands for, and efforts devoted by the vendors to provide, ever greater pdf support. And the pining for cheap large format readers for pdf use.
