We are not argueing we are debating and thats fine by me. no anger on my part in any of my posts :-)

First of all Yamaha the corporation has several divisions for keyboards. They have the digital piano line, arranger/homekeyboards line , the pro workstation lines etc

Each product has to make a targeted profit from its sales. But overall yamaha need to increase their total profits accumulated through their combined sales. There is a fine balance between maximising the sales from one division without cannabalising sales from another division. It would make no sense for T2 sales to increase at the expense of Motif sales for example.

In fact thats the basis for a good illustration :-)

A yamaha motif ES keyboard owner wants upgrade his instrument. He needs a workstation. He would initially like a 76 key keyboard and is drawn to the top of the range motif XS retailing in th UK for approx £1400 however he is blown away by the SA sounds in the T2 61 key arranger keyboard which costs £2100. He cant afford to buy both so he buys the T2 with 61 keys . The Home keyboard/arranger line profits but at the expense of its motif XS range. The production/marketing costs for the T2 and the Motif are not the same because of tyhe differnt volumes produced and the niche market of home/arranger keyboards.

Go to the motifator website and you will see that this was not a dreamed up example. There have been about a dozen posts on that site since the T2 came out and countless debates about the frustration existing yamaha product owners have concerning their next yamaha purchase relating to either switching to the T2 or upgrading from the motif classic or ES to the T2 in preference of the XS

Yes the T2 costs more so yamaha should stil be making a profit on the difference between the the price of the XS and the T2 right ? Wrong !!! The production costs are very different because of the differnce in volume and scale. the costs of developing/producing variation on the same product i.e XS 6,7 and 8 are a lot less than the cost of producing just the T2 because the costs of the XS6,7 and 8 are shared. but if the T2 is purchase over the XS then the XS line loses that contribution to their fixed costs in producing the motif XS 76 keyboard.

No company can survive if it is not genuinely increaseing its market share against its competitors . Keyboard owners tend to be quite loyal to their brand. Learning a new operation system for example would put me off changing brand. We have already seen on this site people who have purchased an instrument away from their usual brand who have struggled to keep it simply because they were not familiar with the OS of the new brand, and so there is a genuine risk that instead of winning more customers away from Korg,Ketron,Roland yamaha would lose some of its customers from its other products.

If if Yamaha produced a 76 key arranger it most certainly would cannabalise its own pro market keyboard sales . Similarly if they put true T2 sounds on the motif XS it would canabalise its arranger keyboard sales.(some of you guys on here have stated that you would try the motif XS ) Yamaha the Corporation are already sticking their necks out by putting arranger type functions on their pro workstation keyboards. There is a reason why Yamaha keep some of the functions from their workstations from their arranger products and vice versa and it is not because thats what the buying public want. It is to maximise sales from the different product ranges.

So in a very long winded way (my apologies for the long post) there would have to be a genuine busines advantage to yamaha producing a 76 key arranger keyboard and from what i understand (no matter how many times we the minority stamp our feet in frustration) there jut isnt sufficient overal benefit to Yamaha the corporation in doing this otherwise i can assure you, just like any other profit focused company, they would.


[This message has been edited by spalding (edited 03-21-2008).]

[This message has been edited by spalding (edited 03-21-2008).]