> It appears that some sensor manufacturers have a strong desire to force people into subscriptions and this is sometimes even a metric mentioned in their annual reports
This is a huge problem that goes way beyond the subject of this article. Most companies (especially publicly traded ones) want recurring revenue on their books, not one-time sales. This is why even traditional hardware vendors like Cisco/Juniper try to get as much recurring revenue as possible with subscriptions to unlock ports etc.
A CFO explained it to me once that "a dollar of one-time sale contributes 1x to our valuation while a dollar of recurring revenue contributes 17x". I may have translated that wrong but you get the idea.
This is a huge problem that goes way beyond the subject of this article. Most companies (especially publicly traded ones) want recurring revenue on their books, not one-time sales. This is why even traditional hardware vendors like Cisco/Juniper try to get as much recurring revenue as possible with subscriptions to unlock ports etc.
A CFO explained it to me once that "a dollar of one-time sale contributes 1x to our valuation while a dollar of recurring revenue contributes 17x". I may have translated that wrong but you get the idea.