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| I'll let someone else debate the value of printed yield maps and whether having your seed rep print them as a service offers value, but I find the question of what this announcement does regarding one's interest in purchasing the software interesting...
First of all, as far as I am aware Farmworks is the ONLY company that has built a sustained apparently profitable business model around desktop ag software. It looks pretty obvious that everyone else is subsidizing their desktop farm level software with other products (John Deere, SST, Ag Leader, etc.). I think Mapshots has depended on corporate development contracts for some time, with Pioneer being one of those. From my standpoint, this announcement is probably a positive for Mapshots users like myself. The big question mark for them was always could the get a large enough user base to actually support their vision and goals. I think anyone who has spent time looking into their products would acknowledge that they have brought many, many positive things to the ag software world, several of which have been copied by other vendors over the last few years. Their goal always seemed to be to build cool, useful stuff and than try to figure out how to make money. Now that they are in the hands of a corporate parent, the day to day bill paying is less critical. Sure, there is the risk now of stagnation and a high-level corporate decision to cut funding, but life is full of tradeoffs and with the same people still in place I am excited to see what kinds of new technology and tools we will see coming.
I remember Ted remarking to me many years ago at one of the precision ag conferences that if he could just build software and figure out how to get paid for it while letting someone else do the selling/biz management he would find that the ideal arrangement. This news certainly seems to be a big step in that direction. | |
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Pioneer Hi-Bred acquires MapShots
