Roland is going to ask 100 of it's more highly valued employees to volunteer to be fired this Christmas season. The lucky ones are going to get a nice good bye package.
I think Roland has been out of touch with the street retail market for years.
I also think Cakewalk was drifting away from the sensible and effective decision making it was founded on.
The match up has been like a perfect storm... Roland was worth less than it has ever been in it's entire history as a publicly traded company just last October. It's doing a little better now but it's still in the all time low range.
Roland is not in a position to give Cakewalk the support it needs at this moment and Cakewalk isn't a very large part of Roland's revenue. Roland has a lot of stuff going on that it has to focus on or make go away and it is in the process of doing it.
After it gets rid of the 100 employees as it has announced it will, the opportunity to revive the company will be left to less expensive and perhaps less experienced employees.
I hope someone figures out that there is an ever growing number of musicians on the planet and that they can connect Roland with the musicians' actual interests... I'd like the company that makes my favorite DAW to stick around for a long time.
I hope Cakewalk gets back to the point where it sells gobs of good stuff at full price instead of pretending that discounting, freebies, and looking the other way when it doesn't work out is a long term strategy for success.
Good luck.
best regards,
mike