Slashdot Mirror
Fusion Garage Going After Lower-Price Tablet Market
nk497 writes "Fusion Garage has dropped the price of its follow-up to the JooJoo tablet, cutting the Grid10's price by $200 to $299 in the US and £259 in the UK. Outspoken CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan has clearly been following the HP TouchPad fire sale, and noticed the importance of price when it comes to taking on Apple's iPad. He said there's no point in buying 'a poor carbon copy' of the Apple tablet for the same price. 'At $499, why would you buy — it's like going to China and buying a [fake] Louis Vuitton bag, at the same price as the real Louis Vuitton bags. It doesn't make sense, when you know it's a rip-off product,' he said."
Isn't this the same guy and company that ripped off the CrunchPad from Michael Arrington?
I think the court case is proceeding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo
After that sold only a few hundred units, they ditched the name and came out with a new tablet. The UI seems interesting, but I don't think this is going to sell many units.
This space for rent.
...Did he just say *his* product was a "poor carbon copy" and a "rip-off"?
Did he just claim that every tablet in the world, his own included, is "a rip-off product", to quote the quote?
Has Apple so completely won the mind-share fight that every tablet product, no matter how technically distinctive, is an iPad clone?
The RDF is strong with this one.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"going to China and buying a [fake] Louis Vuitton bag, at the same price as the real Louis Vuitton bags"
No surprise: this is what people have been saying for years. Apple didn't create the tablet, but they created the tablet _market_, and anyone who can afford it is going to buy the real thing. The only people buying non-iPad tablets are those who can't afford the iPad. This gives Apple tremendous market clout: it gets to sit at the top and make a profit, while everybody else scrambles for table scraps and attempts to sell knock off products for lower cost - which means invariably having less capable hardware.
The tablet war is just as over as the desktop PC war was in about 1986 - sure there were other "alternatives" (Atari STs, Amigas, whatever) but they were dead platforms still twitching. The market had spoken, it's just that the people buying those other platforms didn't realize it yet. It's just that way now with iPads: the market has spoken, and it wants the iPad. Anybody else is going to have a rough ride: all you can do is attempt to sell a much lower end product without the compelling advantages that draw people to buy iPads.
Yeah, amazing how a CEO can even give the impression that his product might be a copy of another product. Not sure if this guy can keep afloat his company for long with such remarks.
A non-Apple branded pad is never going to get the same perceived envy from onlookers which is why a lot of the people are willing to part with the additional cash...people need the self-esteem boost.
Buying a fake Rolex impersonates a real Rolex while buying a Seiko does not. It's not important that you know it's fake...it's that others think it's real.
The off-brand pad will never have the allure to the masses of the iPad. In fact...it will probably have less allure than an Apple branded fake.
A no-name company with a skeevy CEO, a custom OS instead of Android or something more well-supported? Maybe at $100, or possibly even $200. But once you get into the $300 range, you've moved beyond the impulse buy and well into the realm where I want a name-brand reputable company backing it--and an OS that I know is and will be supported.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Give me a $100 tablet and I'll buy one. Just have it run GNU/Linux (no OS fee) and require an SD card rather than an internal hard drive. Maybe have it be relatively cheap/slow compared to competitors, using older technology that is presumably cheaper to use. I'm not going to pay $300 for something which not only has a most-likely-shitty proprietary OS, a small (but internal) hard drive, and "iPad ripoff" quality.
There's a big difference between being a copy of something and being poor quality. His point about the China analogy is that people dole out the extra cash for the name, so you shouldn't price things assuming you have a name like Apple when you don't. However, that doesn't imply that people wouldn't be willing to pay a smaller amount for a no-name that works just as well. Personally, "best-bang-for-my-buck" is always my favorite brand.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
Isn't that the point of capitalism? If I need a car I do not have to have a BMW or Porsche. A Hyundai is fine and much better on my wallet. This is the same principle.
Why should we condemn Fusion Garage if they they do it cheaper? Less press = more supply and marketshare. Economics 101
http://saveie6.com/
For what it's worth, it's now easier in China to buy real Louis Vuitton bags than fakes. Several years ago, the fake markets were wide open and real LV stores were nonexistent. However, since the Great Cleanup of 2008 (Olympic year), the fake markets have been largely shut down. Real LV stores have opened legitimate operations. There's one within two miles of my house, and believe me, it's real. After being in factory business for a while, you can tell a real from a fake by the quality of materials, the stitching, etc. Sort of like how geeks can tell a phishing email right away by how it sounds, simply by virtue of receiving so many phishing emails, as opposed to the Great Unwashed Morons of Middle America who actually think there is a Nigerian prince on the other end of the connection. What morons! Can you believe the Constitution permits these people to vote! "Yeah, I sent my life savings to a person who contacted me by email, but I still maintain my political enfranchisement"...puh-LEEZ! We need an intelligence test before allowing voting...but I digress.
The fact is that legitimate LV shops have opened up, and the fake shops have been shut down the the power of the government. That's the nice thing about living in China, you really do have a one-to-one relationship with the government you live under, rather than the "laissez-faire" non-relationship that Americans have with their federal government. I imagine that it must be the same in other civilized countries like Europe, even though I've never been there.
Funny thing is, the elimination of the fakes is driving innovation in the local market. Now that everyone can't get an LV bag for $50, local brands are appearing to fill the gap between "crap no-name bag" and "luxury genuine foreign brand". Mr. Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan is operating on a three-year-old dead meme. I'm not saying that LV fakes aren't available, I'm saying that they're not readily available in fake markets like they were a few years ago. This opens everything for the local innovators (those expressly given permits by the government to innovate, of course). Chinese brands are not well-known because local merchants always default to making fakes - a dumb idea intended to maximize corporate profits on the backs of the workers. With the wise move by the government (which, in China, is staffed by scientists, engineers, and other no-bullshit-style atheists) to permanently close the fake markets, the intended consequences are to make independent innovation a reality. With any luck, we can only hope that American corporate CEOs will find themselves regulated in the same way. Imagine how better America would be if the government were run by scientists and engineers, and nutso religion-mongers were not allowed to hold office, much less vote?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
he is simply saying it.
Far too many pick up an iPad competitor and immediately start thinking, if it costs the same why not just buy the iPad. I agree his choice of words isn't the greatest.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
...I feel bad these suckers who are lining up to buy "a cheap carbon copy".
'At $499, why would you buy — it's like going to China and buying a [fake] Louis Vuitton bag, at the same price as the real Louis Vuitton bags. It doesn't make sense, when you know it's a rip-off product,' he said."
This statement makes no sense.
The ONLY reason to buy a louis vuitton bag for $500 is to show off to other people (especially possible dating partners) that you have the money to buy one, or you're romantically involved with someone who can afford it. On the scale of trashiness, its a bit above simply waving cash around, but not much above it. Humorously, it used to mean you had the money, but for a couple decades now it merely means you're willing to go into debt, which is not quite the same level of sex appeal as having the cash.
Anyway, as long as its well known that options A B or C all cost $500, all adequately serve the purpose of advertising that you spent the money. They could increase sales dramatically by engraving $500 on the "fake" bags or "fake" tablet case.
In a way, spending an ipad's worth of money on a bad copy, is even better, because it proves you can afford to buy something useless. Its one thing to have the dough to make a capital purchase for something that improves your life like an ipad. But you must really be loaded with money (or debt) if you are willing to buy something useless for about the same price.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I like to buy my iPad knock offs from local dealers.
In other news, I'm going to sell my entire stock of pink unicorns for fifty cents each.
And I have as many pink unicorns as FusionGarage has $200 tablets that don't 100% suck.
OSS is more than a product sold on the shelf.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Sorry, I caught the headline of this story across my RSS feeder widget on my Android phone. I have similar widgets on my Android tablet. Knock on them all you want, but it's the one thing that the iPhone users I know would like to have (instead of a screen full of program icons).
I can appreciate what Apple has created, but there have been a couple things created outside of Cupertino.
Also of note, I was wondering how a CEO can get away with talking down his products and then I saw that Fusion Garage is privately funded and note publicly owned.
When an android tablet maker can get comparable specs to an iPad for $199 they'll sell like mad. Anything higher and they have a minimal seller, period.
I swore to never buy an Apple product, lo and behold I ended up with an iPad 2. Ultimately, the aspect ratio of the Android horde was the deal breaker, the only one to successfully tempt me has been the Tab 10. The iPad 2 is smooth, sleek, works great, and most importantly works in portrait and landscape mode (I find myself using it in portrait more than landscape, since most web pages are vertical.) But the iPad 2 is not "magically better" than the other tablets. Having fiddled around with the Tab 10, I can say it's just as solid of an experience as an iPad 2. The problem is mentality. People have this strange idea in their head that Apple products are "the best" simply because of a logo. And honestly, the iPad 2 is top notch, and will stay top notch, until other designers are willing to go balls-to-the-wall and compete on equal grounds. That means getting over the "Apple is better by default" mentality. And this CEO literally just said "The iPad 2 is better than our product!" Which is even stupider than Motorola overpricing the Xoom.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
We need an intelligence test before allowing voting
The United States tried that once. It was outlawed after it was discovered that southern states were giving out more difficult tests to black people than to white people.
Why would the rip off Louis Vuitton bag be any worse that the real thing? There are good knock offs and bad ones. Some of those rip off items come off the same assembly line as the real ones.
Nobody has the brand recognition in the tablet market that the iPad has. That is fact. If you told somebody you bought a transformer or a zoom, they wouldn't know what you were talking about. More and more people know Android, but still a much smaller set than iPad.
For the uneducated masses, the iPad is the real thing and the others and knockoffs. Your product might be just as good, or even better, but this doesn't matter because the perception is the iPad is better. If you can convince people that your product might not be the best, but might be good enough, then you might be able to convince somebody to buy it if it is 1/3 or so less in price.
Best case, people are pleasantly surprised that the 'knockoff' is actually pretty good. Maybe they don't miss the app store because they find all they want in the market. Maybe they discover their phone can do things the iPad can't. Then you can get established in the market.
But for the same price, people aren't as willing to take a chance on the off brand.
Remember the price quoted in GBP includes VAT and all import Taxes.
The US price is without any sales Tax.
Still, even taking those factors into consideration, the price is still rather high. I guess the $1 == £1 rule still applies. rather than £1.60 == £1.00approx
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
The iPad is great but costly. Androids in general have been sluggish in UI response and are somehow always behind the curve of the latest Android OS because the tablet makers don't want to bother with building an update for it. Too many tablet makers jumped on the ship of building an imitation iPad, few actually built a worthwhile tablet.
What I do want to use such knock-off tablets for is for home control - mount the thing against the wall or in your shower for intermediate touch screen access. Can't justify that at $500+ but I could definitely do it at $100-200. The electronics should be cheap enough, most of them are completely plastic and have shitty backlighting, are missing Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi and all the neat stuff that would make them expensive.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Did somebody just figure out that selling a copy for less than the original is important for its sales success? Quick! Call Bloomberg!
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
Wait, what did he just say about his product? That's it's a fake iPad and/or a rip-off?
Shouldn't you say more neutral or positive things about your own products?
It's interesting how we are so used to being bullshitted that when someone is honest enough about his product, even if he says nothing that everyone haven't already perceived, we find it strange. It is an iPad rip-off. It is cheaper. We all know it. And, regardless, there's a huge market for that exact kind of product, so why should he restrain his words?
Wait, what did he just say about his product? That's it's a fake iPad and/or a rip-off?
Can't you read? He was saying that all the other Android tablets were expensive iPad "rip-offs", but that his would be a cheap iPad "rip-off". What's wrong with that if his cheap iPad "rip-off" works more or less as well?
I love how all the slashdot free-market evangelists change their tune when someone might be daring to compete with Apple. Then things like design patents are suddenly OK, even if it's just how a fucking flat rectangular screen is viewed.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
you have a bajillion apps to choose from on the iPad.
Whereas withh Android you only have a tenth of a bajillion. The number in itself is irrelevant, it only matters if thee are "name" apps that you can only get on the iPad.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Fusion Garage worked with Arringon to produce CrunchPad. Then betrayed Arrington:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/crunchpad-end/