[Tristan Lall]

Nice work with that product line. Very nice work.

IFI's experience with engineering for mass production appears to have resulted in a great feature set at an excellent price point. They've definitely shaken up the economics of FRC in a good way! (I'm very curious about the business model and the profit margin, though....)

It's going to be interesting to see AndyMark adapt to this: they've released some nice new components as well, but I can't help but conclude they've been grossly upstaged. AndyMark has the FIRSTChoice contract, but they're going to have to work on optimizing the details to catch up to IFI's latest offerings. And since it's too late for major part changes for 2013, will this force AndyMark to cut prices and reduce their 2013 earnings targets?

I hadn't recently thought to count the number of staff working for IFI with top-quality FRC experience—but they've got a dream team going there, for sure. AndyMark has expertise, but (I presume) doesn't have the financial flexibility to pay a horde of FRC experts to work on things they're passionate about for a year, and doesn't have the supply chain and in-house manufacturing capability to turn out a completely new product line in that time.

On a wholly speculative note, I wonder what kind of market pressure it would take for AndyMark (a smallish business) to conclude that if you can't beat them, join them?

As for BaneBots, given IFI's new planetaries, they're done for. There is a 0% chance that I'd waste my time dealing with BaneBots' frequently unreliable gearheads, or their hit-and-miss service, when IFI—full of people I know and trust—is offering a substitute at a comparable price, with the promise ("coming soon") of better documentation and reasonable prospects for on-time delivery. BaneBots can't be making much profit on their low-end can motors, and unless they have a huge surprise for us, that's essentially all they'll be selling to FRC teams this year—I doubt they'll be back in 2014.

It seems strange to think of FRC as a real, functioning market, but IFI's newfound strength is certainly going to make 2013 an interesting year from an economic point of view.

One more thing to consider: there's the prospect of a new control system platform in the future, and I don't doubt that IFI wants to supply it. Will they be in a position of such strength in a year's time that they'll have cornered the market on both controls and mechanical hardware in FRC? Wouldn't that be a satisfying resolution to their ouster from FVC and the loss of the FRC control system contract a few years ago?