Current Market Trend

Crumbling Traditional Supply & Demand Chain in the
Computer Hardware Sale

As the growth in the internet continues to bridge consumers to lowest pricing on anything and everything hardware and software related, most retailers and wholesalers in the Computer related industries are fading out. In our current market, local computer retailers and wholesalers are at the risk of closing shop or changing their main product line of to servicing rather than rapidly decreasing margin in traditional hardware and software sales.

Many of these local computer shops experiencing lower profit margins on readymade hardware and software are losing sales to online Giants in the likes of newegg.com, CDW, and others. Those that are in business today are instead opting to sell servicing and hardware that require professional installation like computer based Closed Caption TV security systems (Commercial grade Digital Video Recorders, DVR) or Point of Sales (POS) Systems to alleviate the decreasing profit margin.

But now, even big giants like DELL are concentrating on added Services like onsite warrantees and services at affording pricing packaged with their system sales. DELL is even offering a limited but packaged line of POS hardware and software, as do HP (Compaq) offering its line of POS systems with partner portals that emulate the dominant POS giant, IBM. Even Circuit City has added Fire Dog for computer servicing revenue.

What will these local computer shops sell to maintain a living?

DELL and HP (Compaq) do not have their own proprietary POS software, yet.

Microsoft Eyes the Vertical Market

Since early 2006, Microsoft released and had been developing wePOS operating system. This operating system, like that of Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, was created specifically for the vertical Market with "toned down" system features that enable fast boot-up or startup period. wePOS, or Windows Embedded for Point of Service, was created to target the growing POS industry by eliminating vast features of Windows XP and adding industry specific features. It has features and functions that enable POS software developers to save "time and money [because] Windows Embedded for Point of Service is also the first point-of-service operating system platform to provide plug-n-play support for retail device peripherals" like cash drawers, receipt printers and scanners.

By aggressively developing and marketing not only to the end-users or software/hardware users, but more importantly toward POS developers, Microsoft's transition toward POS development provides proof to the Vertical Market's growth potentials

Target Market: "Small-Emerging Private Franchises"

"How do you know what you have?" we asked.

"I don't. I just go with my gut feeling", the owner responded with gloom.

The retail market has been in flux for many years. And simply, small and mid-sized retailers are being pushed aside by the giants of the retail distribution world. These giants (such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, and Costco) have the will and the budget to seek better business management tools. These include advanced logic tools in inventory management to even more advanced sales and marketing management tools. And they win, with absolute efficiency and absolute reticence to push aside quickly their numerable competitors.

POSmatic ONsight has been developed, hence, to target these "Small Private Franchises". These are independent and private owners of multi-location retail stores, where these owners have similar requirements as that of the Big Chains (we define them as "franchises" because of their start-up requirements and difficulty factors). ONsight combines the cost effectiveness (pricing of ONsight powered POS systems are in its own class), usability, and the ability to effectively and understandably, the right information to the owner- all terminals and all locations are interconnected- providing critical business information on "second-to-second" demand. In such a market climate, the right information is critical to survive and thrive. Currently, many of these "Small Private Franchises" use archaic methods of business management tools, including their "GUT-puter? ("Gut & Computer" or "Guess-timation"). POSmatic sees this many times over in our target groups. With ONsight, owners needn't drive their businesses blind. They can have the same tools as the big chain retail giants.