Nonlinear Dynamics = Profit!

Nonlinear Dynamics announced today its results for the year and it turns out they made a good amount of money (>1 million) this year, which is a record for them. Good news in the bioinformatics industry are always good! They're mostly known for their 2D protein gels analysis software (Progenesis) which we use at the lab... it's the best, but it's also VERY expensive (more than 100k CAN). I guess that's a problem with such a limited market, you gotta charge more to turn out a profit... kinda like Genespring, one of the best microarray data analysis sofware, which cost 3000$ (CAN) / seat / year... Having to fear massive open source development when you're not well established (i.e. Microsoft) require good nerves and a truckload of money. But these examples show that bioIT companies can be profitable; you just have to target a very specific field of bioIT and offer an outstanding solution to problems encountered by this field. This being said, to me the majority of future bioinformatics jobs are in the academic market. Maybe it's because I'm biased in this regard (never worked for an industry). Only time will tell.