121–128 of 128 posts
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Being able to sell a $500 product for $200 says nothing about whether anyone would buy version 2 or 3 when the price goes back up to $500.
Costs will decrease in the meantime.
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The first generation PS3 is a noisy energy hog. I picked up an AppleTV 2nd gen for Netflix and streaming media because it runs silently at 6W, compared to the fat PS3's 170-200W. Depending on how much you watch, the AppleTV might pay for itself in energy savings alone in 12-18 months.
If the Apple TV wasn't stuck at 720p I would probably consider it. I have a friend currently doing a similar setup to what I have with the PS3 via a Logitech Revue and if that ends up working out well I will probably pick one up. The addition of Android 3.0 on the Revue also makes it a bit more of an appealing idea. While I won't save as much energy over the PS3, just the reduction in fan noise will likely be worth t…
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Right, but recouping a $68-118 loss is more feasible than recouping a $168-218 loss. There's a decent markup on their accessories and the potential for app sales. If it drives enough demand and gets companies licensing their OS and selling hardware running it, they have a chance to make it work, and it's probably money better spent than any advertising they do. Look at it this way; before the fire sale, how often did…
I agree that this firesale is a valuable lesson in pricing, and HP clearly cut the price by more than they needed to to achieve their goal of unloading existing inventory, but there are more factors at play here than price alone. I'd bet that if HP had just lowered the price to $250 they would have sold far less units than are now selling on ebay for $250. The $99 price point set off a feeding frenzy on this sale, an…
Consider this as well:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/hp-single-handedly-destro...
HP has set the bar pretty low for tablet pricing. All these new Touchpad owners now have $99 in their head, and when it comes time to upgrade, they will probably walk away from the more expensive options.
Personally, I don't think there is a tablet market, just an iPad market, and a big part of that has been price. Only Apple is Apple, and nobody else can demand that kind of money for what is essentially a toy and get away with it on the scale they can, for various reasons. Had HP set the bar at $200-250, they could have made the sales they were hoping to make, lost less money and still potentially make money on future, cheaper to produce hardware; or at least left that door open for another company to license their OS and do so. Nobody can make money at $99 without some huge profit margins from something else, and I don't think the tablet market has that something else (yet). Now, a lot of tablet consumers have that $99 price in their head, and it's going to be a hard sell getting them to spend more in the future.
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No need to make up wild guesses. iSuppli says the TouchPad bill of materials is $318. http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/HP-TouchPad-Carr... Even if you think they're off by 10%, $99 would never work.
Right, but that's parts. If the parts are already bought, then only labor and shipping has to be paid on top.
They'll also make a loss with this shipment even though they won't sell them at $99 again. I think this is just to build more Web OS customers so they can open source, licence or sell Web OS and say "we have this many customers".
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The first generation PS3 is a noisy energy hog. I picked up an AppleTV 2nd gen for Netflix and streaming media because it runs silently at 6W, compared to the fat PS3's 170-200W. Depending on how much you watch, the AppleTV might pay for itself in energy savings alone in 12-18 months.
If the Apple TV wasn't stuck at 720p I would probably consider it. I have a friend currently doing a similar setup to what I have with the PS3 via a Logitech Revue and if that ends up working out well I will probably pick one up. The addition of Android 3.0 on the Revue also makes it a bit more of an appealing idea. While I won't save as much energy over the PS3, just the reduction in fan noise will likely be worth t…
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I think the fact that 32GB models at $150 sold out just as fast supports the idea that your "demand curve" is the one that is different from the average consumer. Also in support of this are the crazy prices people are paying on eBay for them right now, upwards of $250 for a 16GB model. It's pretty clear they could have sold them off quite briskly at $150/$200, possibly even just as fast. It seems the resellers nabbe…
Also, the $99 pricing got them a lot of good press because it was a very good deal. An average deal would have no press so no sales, the sales are not a linear correlation of the pricing.
I live in Canada, I ran out of my house and hopped on the subway the moment I heard the news and I posted the first comment on the TIMN article about the fire sale from my phone on the way. I checked the Best Buy, Future Shop & The Source. I also ordered two online, one from Best Buy and another from Dynamism.
I didn't get a single one, or even see one being purchased. They were all gone in the first 20 minutes from retail, employees bought up any remaining retail stock at smaller or less urban stores that night. Online stores sold out while I was on the subway.
That wasn't just high demand, that was completely insane demand. There is just not a snowball's chance in hell that a $50 bump would have a serious effect, other than possibly dragging the sell out process from minutes to hours. It may have also saved a little money in CSR wages, considering a bunch of businesses had to cancel hundreds and thousands of orders that Monday.
> the sales are not a linear correlation of the pricing.
This is true, likewise it's not this extremely clear line where $100 is absolute Black Friday-esque insanity and $150 is gathering dust on the shelf.