the arranger market as a whole might be shrinking (although i am not sure that is true at all ) but yamaha's target arranger market does not seem to be shrinking at all. if anything it is snatching up the previous buyers of technics and roland and gem owners . They are also stealing some straight workstation users as well.

Also the arranger market has much greater predictability and longevity than worktations because the market is resistant to change and hence each 'new product' is remarkably simlar to the last with a few tweaks and yet the arranger buyer is incrediibly loyal to their brand of arranger provider . If korg yamaha and ketron do things right they can almost gaurantee that the next 4 - 5 future upgrades will be bought by their current customer base .

Yamaha cannot say the same about the motif brand, neither roland of the fantom brand and korg of the M3.
This is because the arranger buyer typically has :
a. the money buy each successive upgrade when they appear.
b. dont want to learn a competitors operating system
c. dont purchase because of need but desire to have the latest greatest no matter how irrational the purchase is
D. Arnt interested in usinf computers to make music
E. never fully use their existing arranger so features can be recycled as new ' when they existed on either previous models or previous competitors models

I undestand and accept Ians point very well.

The fact that yamaha add new styles to their overall mix such as the 'Prince purple rain style ' , I believe i can fly 'and the over used Sledge hammer style before that for example demonstrate the point ian was making. Those are styles from my era . And in the future there will be styles from my daughters era and so on.

If anything, its the straight up hardware workstations that are at the most risk of diminishing sales as more younger musicians turn to controller keyboards and note books for live playing. Hard ware workstations instruments used to compete on sound quality and total compact production. However even the best hardware workstations cannot compete with a well integrated controler keyboard and computer with the best available software in terms of sound quality and compact production.

If i were to crystal ball gaze i would say that arrangers have a more sure 10 year future than workstations.



[This message has been edited by spalding1968 (edited 12-24-2010).]