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Say Goodbye To The Netpliance i-opener
HiyaPower writes "Netpliance announced that they have thrown in the towel and will no longer produce their internet appliance. This follows the failure of web appliances by Virgin, and a number of others. It looks like even grandma wants a good isp when she logs on the net and that bundling cute hardware with inferior service just doesn't cut the mustard. This will be a sad note to all of those who have yet to buy the unit that cost $400 to produce for a fraction of that amount. Get'm while you can, cuz they don't make'm no more..." CEO John McHale says in that announcement: "We plan to reposition
Netpliance from a direct consumer Internet appliance service provider
to an enabling infrastructure and managed services company." Perhaps there will be some closeouts? jensend sent in this C|Net coverage as well.
She's completely computer-illiterate, and she has been using an I-Opener for e-mail pretty successfully. She's lost most of her hearing, so it's really made it possible for her to communicate with family more regularly and easily than she could on the phone. A PC is waaay too complicated for her- she learned to learn by rote, and the fact that I could fit click-by-click instructions for doing I-Opener e-mail on one side of a piece of paper is the only reason she uses it successfully.
I think the lesson here is that the market for peripherals for the permanently computer illiterate is not big enough to sustain a company like I-Opener. Too bad, because there aren't a lot of good alternatives for them.
Think about it. I go to CNN.com and see "Video Coverage!". I click on it in an i-Opener or any netpliance. I get a cryptic error message like "Unknown file type: .rm", and I don't know what it means! It's not working. Let's take it back, it doesn't do what I told it to.
They don't work as good as PCs. They don't do what they should be able to.
The CNET article also says that they are going to license the I-Opener to AT&T and continue to provide the service, probably one layer removed from the consumer.
From CNET: Netpliance said it is forming a venture with AT&T's WorldNet service to jointly offer a version of the I-opener, with Netpliance providing infrastructure and helping to manage the service. The $299 units, similar to the I-opener, will go on sale after Thanksgiving on QVC, the television shopping network. Monthly service for the I-opener will be priced at $21.95.
I can see the fnords!
Translation:
We're firing people, `cuz this "let's sell hardware cheap to Joe Schmoo so we can rape him on service charges" thing we've been doing is making us hemorrage money like you wouldn't believe. Instead, we're gonna try the "let's sell hardware cheap to Joe Q. Business so we can rape him on service charges". Mabye we'll offer to add the company logo to the I-Opener for `em. Never know, might work. Gotta do something, `cuz otherwise the buzzards are gonna eat us inside of six months.
.sig: Now legally binding!
See http://www.linux-hacker.net and read the I-Appliance Discussion Forum BBS . You can use an SMC 10/100 or similar USB Ethernet adapter (be careful, not all work).
I dont care if theyw ere your firend or your enemey.
The simple principle remains. Take the profit out of an endevour and the endevour will cease. You can't expect others to pay for your stealing. They won't any more then you would in reverse.
"I wish I could say it is a shame that Netpliance is having to kill the iOpener but well, they sort of deserved it. Netpliance tried to build a piece of hardware at a loss and then make up the money by seeling a service. This is a poor business model ..."
Hmm. So game consoles have a bad bsuienss model? (They sell the concole at a loss to sell the software.) Tell that to the milliosn of VERY happy investors in Sony. The classic example of all of this is Razor Baldes, wher the same mdoel is used and have been hugely financially successful.
The problem isn't the mdoel. The problem is greedy people who took unreasonable advanatge of it. (Go look in a mirror.) If you wanted them to survive, maybe you should have helped them MAKE money rather then lose it.
Game consoles do not sell hardare at a real loss. Besides which they have an impressively effective licensing system which garantees they will make money on all games produced for said system. That Playstation logo you see when the game starts up, it costs about 5$ per game produced by the game publisher. Say a million copies of the game are made and sold, thats 5 million easy dollars Sony just made. Netpliance was not that clever. Don't think you're so fucking smart. I never went out and bought an iOpener, I didn't need yet another underpowered piece of computer hardware to further add you my electricity bill. Fuck Netpliance for not being clever enough to stay in business.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Agreed. If NPLI had managed to partner with an ISP (AOL? Earthlink?) and co-brand (as opposed to "hiding" the ISP beneath the embedded system), they might have done really well. Let the ISP fund the costs of the hardware, and sell demographic data back to the ISP.
The built-in USB port also meant their unit was well-positioned for the cablemodem or DSL age.
I agree with you that they were ahead of their time. The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Nice attempt at mis-direction. Yes, you're correct: The i-Opener is going away because a few people thought the rules didn't apply to them. The few people involved are Netpliance management. The rules they thought didn't apply to them are:
So-called license "agreements" are nothing of the kind. They are an invalid form of contract, and a massively unethical business practice. As a person may buy a washing machine from Sears and use it as part of a sculpture (contrary to the intentions of the manufacturer), so may they also buy a computer at Best Buy and use it in any manner they wish.
What is the cost of a typical razor? What is the cost of a typical pack of razor blades? The reality is that the cost of the razor will usually be recovered after the sale of three or four (at most) packs of blades. Netpliance's cost differential was way out of whack. When you're looking at two to three years of uninterrupted service revenue to recover the cost of one unit, you've got a big imbalance.
Full-on PCs are dirt cheap. You can get a nicely capable PC for about $700 these days. You're not locked in to any ISP. You're not locked in to any particular browser (though Micros~1 makes it hard for you to switch). You can play real games, not cheeseball Java- and Flash-based rot. And your data is your data. If the ISP goes down, you can still compose email and do other things. The cost/benefit ratio of an Internet Appliance just doesn't measure up to a full PC.
Netpliance thought these rules didn't apply to them. They were wrong. Any failure of their business can be laid squarely at the door of Netpliance's management. The Open Source and hacking communities had nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I really do think that selling hardware at a loss to recoop the cost through service CAN work. Its worked wonders for the cellphone industry. The only problem is, the service is inadaquate. With every other person picking up a high speed internet account from somewhere, dialup accounts (while still VERY prevelant) will be old dinosaurs in 3-5 years. Then again, so will the I-Openers, but the contracts will still last that long.
:)
However, the phone company gave me a dsl modem when I ordered the service. I'm sure that the cost is included in my monthly payment, but there were NO setup charges of any kind, so the charge is effectively invisible. I'm sure the phone companies aren't losing money by this model, and they sure don't seem to be showing any signs of cutting back on offering dsl service.
The I-Opener should have had this built in. Dialup OR dsl, or LAN access. Then sell the internet service with it as planned, but sell dsl service instead of dialup where dsl is available. I guarantee the cost increase wouldn't have been significant, but people are buying up dsl as fast as they can get it, so they wouldn't have chosen a dead market. Sure, in 5 years time, dsl might be in the process of getting replaced by something even more sexy, but at least the IOpener would have served a useful purpose for that length of time and the customers will probably still be using them up to that point and would be happy to purchase whatever they offer next.
You CAN'T plan a long term service option on current technology only. You MUST look to the future and plan for what will be coming in 3 months, 6 months, a year, 3 years. DSL isn't new. Its been available in some areas for well over 3 years and has been talked about for many years before that. Yet Netpliance ignores it even though its an emerging market.
Please note that this applies equally well to cable.
Imagine. A relatively idiotproof box, with built in cable and dsl support, built in hub, (at least enough to daisychain it to another hub), phone connection that can work with either regular dialup service or dsl service. Make it slick and sexy and, most importantly, make sure, whatever price you sell it at, make sure its CHEAPER than the lowest cost PC you can currently purchase. You might get ripped by a few people who only want to install linux on it, but 99% of your customers will be happy to get it for the service and you will succeed. Hmmmmm... I might have to consider this.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Save your lunch money and buy a clue. A very large portion of applications (especially on Windows) are written with professionals in mind. People that can be reasonably assumed to understand basic computer interface concepts. They are afterall being paid to know how to write email and type in a word processor. Since the business market for those sorts of programs has been traditionally (until the past 5 years or so) much larger than the home market developers have stuck to the idea that the people running their software know what they are doing. With the boom in home computer users this view of the market has changed much. More and more programs are being designed to be easy to use. AOL and MSN Explorer are really pointed examples of such software. Developers of internet appliances don't have years of corporate software development that pervades their programming and interface styles. They are just following the example of AOL which makes it nearly impossible to really fuck up in doing a task. Lots of companies now are also following AOL's lead and buidling software which is really friendly. Don't insult developers saying they have no skill and don't know what they are doing. They developed for the market that made them the most money, now they've begun to do the same thing again.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I wish I could say it is a shame that Netpliance is having to kill the iOpener but well, they sort of deserved it. Netpliance tried to build a piece of hardware at a loss and then make up the money by seeling a service. This is a poor business model and only works in a limited number of circumstances (mail order catalogs cost alot to print and mail but for every quarter they lose they make a few bucks from handling fees on orders). Selling non-commodity items at a loss is just generally a bad idea, maybe companies will learn to stay away from this model. PeoplePC and Gateway have the right idea though. You lease-to-own a box from the company for a few tens of dollars a month and bundled with that box is internet access (which is sub-leased from existing ISPs and repackaged at quite a saving to said company). The leases are termed contracts so the company is garanteed to get the full cost of the system and the user gets internet access and something to access it with. If Netpliance had tried this route instead of selling SELLING! their hardware at a loss they would be in a much different position now. I think this will temper (hopefully) these stupid and ill-conceived .com business plans. Tip: you need to make more money than you spend in order to not go bankrupt.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
There are too many companies trying to force the next "killer app" or "insanely great thing" via marketing instead of by using old-fashioned innovation. And their corpses are beginning to pile up...
(And ironically, it's actually cheaper and easier to use innovation. Of course, that assumes one possesses creativity and insight...)
I can see the fnords!
12" or so Touch TFT
ONboard everything type PC strapped on the back (ala IOpener)
Linux Supported Hardware
Wireless keyboard
1 10/100bt ethernet
USB/Firewire if you feel generous
So I can strap it on the wall in the kitchen, the foyer, the bathroom and the garage. Cant it be seen that their is a market for such a device - a terminal class PC with touch TFT up front...
This trend spells bad news for Be Inc, who are staking their lives on their "new" applicance OS, BeIA, to the point that the last line on their main website reads: "We also offer BeOS, an alternative operating system for personal computers"
If they're worried about selling the remaining i-openers in stock, why not make them into Linux boxen and sell them via a slashdot advert??
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're not locked in to any particular browser (though Micros~1 makes it hard for you to switch).
No they don't. My machine here runs Netscape 4.7, Opera and IE.
So what's the hard part?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
----
The iMac was Apple's idea of a network computer, and a success, but of course it's still a proper personal computer as well.
Maybe the Network Computer will be the killer product in 5 years, but at the moment it involves giving up too much for too little gain, even if the cost is less than a PC.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
The passive-matrix screen and 800x600 resolution are something that can't be fixed, but any IO can be hacked with a bit of solder to run a K6-III-333 at speeds up to 450 MHz.
There are serious heat and power supply limits at 450, but even a very conservative clocking of a K6-III-333 underclocked to 200 MHz is about a 2:1 performance boost over the original WinChip 200. Cost of the chip is $30 at Fry's (for those lucky enough to live near a Fry's.)
Hey, it plays MP3s and runs my GPS mapware. I'm happy, even if the GPSware is a Windoze app.
It's never gonna replace your desktop, and for the amount of time/money you'll put into it, you're better off buying a used laptop on EBay. But I had a hell of a lot more fun building my own line-out, headphone jack, second serial port, VGA-out connector, IDE connectors, hard drive mounts, cooling fans, and doing core voltage / CPU-upgrade mods with a soldering iron and a prayer than I ever woulda had with a used laptop.
Like I said in my other post - my thanks to NPLI for the cool hardware. I learned a lot and had a ball doing it.
Virgin was trying to give away similar computers for free, and then fund the monthly internet charges through advertising.
Netpliance was selling the initial hardware for a modest fee, and then charging the typical $20-25/month internet access fees.
Completely different business plans, which have no bearing on one another.
I believe the initial comment in this thread has merit, and the Linux activists did aid in damaging the companies profitability. I don't think you should be proud of financially harming a company that did you no harm.
If thinknic is like that, it can't fail.
The website is still up and selling them. It just looks like they will not produce them anymore read the article they are going to leave the service up and running and continue full support. It looks like they are just scaling back on it so the answer is no you will not be able to get one without having to sign up for the service in the near future. But for $200 for a rebuilt one it is still pretty tempting.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I bought an I-O the day the slashdot article (the first one) hit. it was a 'version1' unit that was fully hackable with no real issues other than the reversed ide cable pins.
it was cute to hack on and a fun project for a while but its limited cpu and non-TFT screen made for a boring user experience.
most folks saw the flaw in their business plan way back then. we all knew they would go belly up sooner or later. and that the high $300 ebay prices for hackable units would soon be a joke; for when the company is being liquidated, their remaining stock would probably go cheap.
any bets on how cheap their remaining stock (of units) will go?
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I would never want a "net device", but I am a geek. I own 8 PC's and I administer many more at work. Because I am a geek people always ask me what kind of computer they should buy, I always give them some idea of what they need.
You can see where this is going...
People who know nothing about the systems ask the people who do know what to buy... How often would you imagine that the word-of-mouth from geeks is praiseworthy over a net device? I would say almost never.
On the bright side (for geeks) there are cheap "PC's" around to hack on. I am trying to get a WebSurfer from Virgin to build a dedicated Linux MP3 player for my car. (The WebSurfer has a disk on a chip WOOO! Talk about fast boots!)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
CEO John McHale says in that announcement: "We plan to reposition Netpliance from a direct consumer Internet appliance service provider to an enabling infrastructure and managed services company."
When their CEO can't even get past the "buzzword phase" how does Netpliance expect to even dream of coming up with a useful product?
Can anyone even decipher what the above quote even means???
Does anyone know of a parallel-port wireless ethernet card that's supported under Linux, or is close enough to futz with? I have a hacked i-opener, but I have an apartment where I can't run cable through the walls and I want to use the i-opener as a portable terminal throughout the place. Sure, it still has a power cord, but I've got power outlets all over the place, whereas I don't have network jacks.
I've been meaning to look into this for a few months but have been too busy. This article seems like the perfect opportunity, though.
Any ideas?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The fact that they want to stop their cash bleed on the hardware should have been very apparant to anyone with eyes when they raised the price of the i-opener back up to $399 instead of the $99 that they had offered for some time. Anyone with a basic grip on economics should have known that it was going to happen way before that.
Basically they are a software company that everyone kept treating like an appliance company. In a July interview on Raging Bull president Kent Savage had to go to pains to get this point across,
Cyber: But isn't a large part of Netpliance's premise to sell that hardware, the I-opener?
Savage: No, not at all. We did that because we had to. We're a market maker and a first mover, and we had to innovate in order to reach this market.
It's really predictable and sad the way that the geek community has so heavily focused on the device. Unfortunately, it was really nothing too special technology-wise and the interesting things that NPLI was up to was its interface and "OS-agnostic" software package. Also it's client-server infrastructure kind of resurrected 'push' in a market and environment where it almost starts to make sense.
The "i-opener experience" is not nearly as stupid as it sounds, if you step outside of your "master of the source" persona and pretend you are on the other-side of the digital divide for a second. Sure, I prefer to navigate the net with Enlightenment as my interface of choice, but I doubt most of the flashing-12:00-on-the-VCR crowd would. The i-opener interface is just clean and as simple and dumbed-down as you can get, which is great for the market they were targetting.
They signed major strategic relations with big cable companies a long time ago (check the press releases on their web site), and their client software is well suited to be rolled out as an adjunct to set-top boxes and appliance offerings from telcos like At&T. It's curious what difficulties they might be going through negotiating "managed services" contracts with these companies because if I was running the company I would have made this shift in business plans a long long time ago. However you feel about it, they'll probably be around for a while yet, especially if they can convince US West or AT&T subsidize the hardware side of things instead of blowing all their IPO capital on it.
Kalin
Metamuscle - Building better bodies through hypertext. Slashdot for bodybuilders.
Metamuscle.com - News in the Iro
"This will be a sad note to all of those who have yet to buy the unit that cost $400 to produce for a fraction of that amount. Get'm while you can, cuz they don't make'm no more..."
And so Slashdot users mourn the passing of a device they were instrumental in killing.
Blaing the failure of this device on "inferior ISP service" is questionable at best. Certainly all the money this company lost producing a loss-leader device that Slashdot promoted using in a way that produced a loss for the company didn't hel pthem survive.
There is a parallel here. Noone produces things for YOUR benefit folks. If you take away the profitability, you take away the product.
Consider that carefully when you think about your feelins on the protection of commercial intelelctual property.
Do you want to live in a world with no writers and no movie makers?
I thought moderators were supposed to save us from idiots. What do we do when the moderators are themselves idiots?? How can this question be off-topic when it directly addresses something in the linked story?? Ahhh, I get it now: idiot moderator.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Here's what I'd tell Netpliance: Please go ahead with whatever onerous changes in terms of service you need to make a buck, but leave the hardware hackable, because in a year or so when you're out of business we'll still be around to make some use of used and surplus i-openers, otherwise they'll all end up in landfills all too soon.
More seriously - my condolences to the employees and investors - and gratitude for the cool hardware.
Before folks start screaming that 3v17 h@x0rZ killed NPLI, judging from their revenue figures and number of units sold, I'd bet that the "hackers" snagged about 5000 units, costing about $1.5M over the history of the company - a drop in the bucket against the $10M+ marketing and G&A expenses for the most recent quarter.
The way to make money off the 'net is not to sell hardware as a loss-leader, nor is it to get into the $20/month ISP business.
That's not to say anyone really knows what the way to make money is, just to say that NPLI and others (e.g. Virgin's "internet appliance" operation folded a few days ago) found out the hard way what it wasn't, and that no amount of marketing expense can change it.
They will be selling them again with AT&T starting after Thanksgiving. Then they will resume selling them on their own after January 31st. They just canceled their remaining contract with Quanta. I assume this means they will be going with someone else or perhaps get AT&T to assist them. Austin Tech News
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com