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Marketing was a part of the pricing equation, but obviously we couldn't set the price according to what we thought we'd sell it best at without taking into consideration the BOM. You cannot divorce pricing from production realities.
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I agree completely with the latter, but once you get estimated product costs you can estimate price at a range of anticipated volumes. If your market analysis is any good, you should then have a reasonable handle on the effect that the required price will have on sales. I'm saying that it's highly likely that the analyses were "happy", estimating higher sales than actually transpired, or lower product costs, or both. Maybe "very happy".
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And it's not true that every product makes sense at only price points. There are many luxury goods that make little sense at their price point, yet still have a market.
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You're not using "makes sense" in the proper context. Let's take a super luxury item, such as a $100 million yacht. The question is whether spending $100 million on a yacht makes sense
to the prospective buyer, instead of spending $200 million on the exact same vessel. Obviously, there still is a relationship between product and price, even though it might be on a level that neither of us thinks "makes sense".
I'm certain that there must be exceptions to the "makes sense" rule, but Segway ain't one of them.
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Failed product marketing is in no way an adequate or complete explanation for the failure of the Segway to gain the traction it had hoped in certain markets. It feels like a simplistic, sloppy excuse for the complicated story of why the Segway failed. I'll agree now that product marketing may have been a part of that failure, but it in no way explains it alone.
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Again, I agree with the latter statement, but this thread was about the Forbes article. Early market analysis is a critical part of understanding whether your product
can be successful.
With regards to your position at Segway, I don't understand the coyness. I searched for a bit, and could find only "webmaster". Did you hold other positions?