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How Much Are You Paying For Electronics Labels?
An anonymous reader writes "Interesting article on CNET about different consumer electronics brands selling identical OEM products, often at wildly different price points. The author also examines the phenomenon of manufacturers releasing "consumer" and "industrial" versions of the same product -- with the cheaper version aimed at businesses. Probably old news for the slashdot crowd, but it's worth reading to see how much Middle America is overpaying. Caveat emptor, indeed." And there are also product lines where the expensive version is aimed at business buyers, because a higher price implies greater credibility.
Old news indeed. I knew this to be the case in TVs when I worked for my father at his TV store in the 60s. It was especially prevalent in home stereo equipment in the 70s and 80s.
The major manufacturers create their own "competition" to flood the market with at the most popular price ranges, often selling under 4 or 5 labels simultaneously, and not all of them at the same price level, despite identical guts. Three major Japanese manufacturers accounted for 14 brands at a "super-store" I visited on a research jaunt, back when I sold the stuff.
Want an eye opener? Go find out who obtained the patents on VHS and Beta VCR systems. Not the current patent/license owners; the creator sold the license for one of them to a competitor, so that no matter which format "won" they'd still be making money.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Wrong.
Sager resells Clevos, just like Alienware. Although, the latest Area-51m is a Uniwill I believe.
If you want to get even cheaper on managed switches, SMC gear is the exact same thing that Dell is selling at half the price.
You see Accton makes a ton of unmanaged and managed gear. They sell bigtime to the OEM market, and they also make most of Dell's stuff.
Who owns SMC? Accton.
Crack the cases and look at them side-by-side and it all becomes clear. Buy Dell and you pay twice as much for the same exact switch. Buy two for the same price as the Dell and you have support that even Dell can't beat - an always available spare!
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
= Mazda = Volvo = Aston Martin = Jaguar
= Pontiac = Oldsmobile (dead now) = Cadillac = Saab
= Mitsubishi = Mercedes-Benz
= Chevy = GM (well, not quite -- Toyota rebrands the Cavalier in Japan, but otherwise there's little sharing between the two companies)
And this one is wrong. Volkswagen = Audi, but not Porsche. While it's true that Dr. Ferdinand Porsche started Volkswagen, and the Pieche and Porsche families have controlling interests in both the VAG (Volkswagen Automotive Group, including Audi, Bentley, and Lamborghini) and the PAG (Porsche Automotive Group, which is just Porsche), the Porsche car company is independently owned and is not part of Volkswagen. Parts and platforms are shared (the original 356 engine was a VW, as was the engine for the 914; the Boxster and 996 share relays and other mechanical parts with VW and Audi models; the Cayenne and the Touareg are built on the same platform; etc), but the companies are not the same. In all of your other examples, the companies are partially or fully owned.
And it's only getting smaller. Gone are the days of many different manufacturers (for example, the single company Audi, which is now only a part of a larger company, started life as four independent companies -- thus the four interlocked circles of the Audi badge), but even back in the early days of automotive development there was a lot of "cross-polination". For example, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche helped built a number of early cars long before he built the first Volkswagen (and even longer before the first 356). Among others, he did plenty of work for Mercedes-Benz and the German military (the Panzer Tiger was designed by Porsche). Porsche still does non-Porsche design work today, such as the engine on the Harley-Davidson V-Rod (this by the Porsche car company, and not the independent Porsche industrial design company).
That's not to say that the different badges don't bring something more to the table. I doubt you'd object that a Lexus ES500 is more luxurious than a corresponding Toyota Camry, or an Acura TSX compared to a Honda Acura. The platforms may be shared, but in many cases the "up-market" brand model will have a larger engine, better suspension (either tigher or softer, depending on the goal -- sports car or luxury car), fancier interiors (leather, woods, metals instead of plastics and vinyls), more options (navigation, sound options), etc. That's not always the case, since many Chevy and Pontiac cars are exact matches minus body cladding (Grand Prix and Monte Carlo, especially before the late-90s/early-00s body redesigns of the cars; Camaro and Firebird prior to the cancellation of the F-body line; Cavalier and Sunfire; etc), but Cadillac is GM's upscale brand, and it shows. The Cadillac CTS (not CTS-V) may be nearly identical to a Chevy Impala, but the CTS is going to be more luxuriously appointed. Perhaps not enough to justify the $10,000+ price difference, but enough to justify some increase in price.
Usually industrial parts are bin-sorted, because suppliers get it through the nose if their parts fail during a QA run (I've watched a Fortune 50 company refuse to do business with a chip house until they fixed some issues with one of their processes - Wal-Mart tactics get used all over). As a result, if the manufacturer can't guarantee the spec by design, they'll bin-sort.
On the other hand, at least for chips its unusual for there to be any difference between the parts other than the guaranteed temperature ranges (consumer is usually 0-70c, industrial is usually -40 to 125c, and military is usually -50 to 150c). Industrial parts come at a minor premium over consumer, while milspec parts come at a major premium over industrial.
So, to make it short - 90% of the time, ICs are bin-sorted and sold as binned. Every once in a while, you'll come across a consumer part that runs like an industrial, but its rare.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
I'll comment on this since I've reverse-engineered both products.
They accomplish EXACTLY the same thing but the two products run completely different hardware AND software. Linksys does this so that they can pit one vendor against another until neither makes any money.
The wireless gaming adaptor uses a MIPS clone from SiliconData with integrated PCI and ethernet interfaces and a Mini-PCI 802.11g card.
The WET54G uses a Ubicom processor (same as what's in the WET-11 except 160MHz instead of 120MHz. It has a Davicom 10/100 MAC and a Cardbus 802.11g card.
Both probably cost exactly the same to produce, but having two designs gives leverage on the supply side and the ability to justify two vastly different price points on the shelf.