ColdFusion – Market Share vs. Profitability

There is a very interesting article over at Knowledge@Wharton about Market Share vs Profitability.

I skimmed it a few months back when it came out but never thought about it in terms of the ColdFusion community until I saw this link at Daring Fireball applying this phenomenon to Apple.

Basically the gist I get from it is that profitability is more conducive to long term health of a company than market share. It’s not proven, but if it is true it puts the ColdFusion market into a particular light. If what is true for companies is true for products, it might not matter to ColdFusion’s long term health if it steals market share from ASP.NET or PHP. ColdFusion’s long term health might be in its profitability, which according to Adobe has been very good.

Market share is still important to us, as it helps determines availability of work. But this phenomenon might a good explanation for why what we see Adobe doing with ColdFusion doesn’t always match up with what the community wishes it would do.