Helmet v Mask

[GarthB]

Originally posted by 3appleshigh
The umpires of tomorrow, sadly,scarily, are the ball players of today, the ball players of today are not ever using the traditional mask, and are used to the helmet, therefore, it is reasonable to believe that the helmet will replace the mask as the predominant headgear of the future of umpiring, this maybe 15-20yrs in the future, but it certainly seems most likely.

There is an excellent example in the marketing world of how that logic failed miserably.

In the 1980's Apple Computer reasoned that if students, the business leaders of the future, were conditioned to use Macs, they would bring them into the business world with them. Apple then locked up the elementary and high school markets, at times giving away the computers. They even held a huge market share in the college arena. At one point educational use of computers was 80% Macs.

Who owns the business market, even today? PC's. In fact, Mac's share of the business market has fallen despite their brilliant strategy of locking up the youth.

The PC industry simply responded: "You're not a student anymore, here's what professionals use." And despite the fact that Macs outperformed PC's in many ways, the PC's won the battle.