Craig, it's good to hear your insights. I have been using Cakewalk since the DOS days and even helped debug some issues with SMPTE sync one time. I have also been in the hardware and software development industry now for well over 30 years, climbing into the upper layers of management and later managing my own enterprises, so I understand the challenges you speak about. And it's really all a familiar sad story. There are many good ideas that can be brought to bear to rescue a struggling business line, but after a company has been acquired into a larger conglomerate of companies, turf wars, silo walls, power struggles, lack of vision and lack of understanding of what drives each core business gets in the way. Ultimately, profitability becomes the only metric, while marketing strategy and audience augmentation by knowing your audience's needs take a back seat, finally leading to poor results.
I also have to disagree that hardware is the answer. Although there's a lot of money in hardware sales, I believe that it is also a challenging business, especially since musicians do not generally have deep pockets. It is much easier to sell a $50 soft Korg M1 than to sell a $1,000 Korg Kross. So it should be easy to properly market Cakewalk software, like the kick-ass Z3TA+2, than hardware.
So what I really want to ask is: Is this market the issue? Can the market sustain healthy sales of these types of products given the cost of R&D and support? Are the other software vendors in the same market also on the edge? Could it all be an issue of price point? $1 apps in the Apple app store move like flies and can generate a lot of revenue by sheer volume. Could any of the Cakewalk products have had more potential at a lower price point? For example, I think the Z3TA+ on my iPad is outstanding, and it only cost me $20. To buy it for the desktop or laptop would have been $99 (I missed the $49 sale), so I have resisted. Why not sell it at a better price point? It might have brought much more total revenue at a lower point.
If you could talk about these issues it would be great because the idea of acquiring all the Cakewalk assets to have a clean start might be attractive, but only if there really is a market along with sound fiscal management.