Several years ago, back when Comdex was still cool, I remember a Panasonic booth set up with ToughBook demonstrations. It looks like the product still exists, and they have a page dedicated to its MIL-STD-810F testing. It's not a marine standard per se, but it does cover shock, vibration, and exposure to both liquid water and excessive humidity.
I think they can be selling them at a loss. I think they are selling them at a loss.
Why?
Well, a quick look at their website gives a few indications:
This page talks about the "market situation." They expect the market for "internet appliances" to grow to over 50 million units by 2002. At the previous poster's estimate of $216 gross profit per unit, that'll get them $1.08B with only a 10% market share!
They are surely willing to sell these units at a loss in order to establish themselves as a leader in this emerging market.
As for the average life expectancy of the device being set at 2 years, I really think that's unreasonable. They have a USB port on the back, which would be a great place to plug in the "i-opener broadband adapter unit." And their embedded software allows automatic updates over the network, so any existing i-opener could automatically reconfigure for broadband over the dialup network. Pretty slick.
Finally, none of this even talks about what kind of money netpliance makes whenever somebody presses the pizza button. Or makes an online purchase through the i-opener consumer portal. Do you really think a pizza business doesn't pay royalties on pizza sales via i-openers? What about when 50 million people have internet appliances? I think most people would rather order pizza from an online menu than try to get it right over the phone. And most pizza places would be happy to get printouts of orders, rather than having to take them down over the phone.
If I had a nickel for every pizza delivery in the USA...
Anyway, it's pretty clear to me why netpliance wants to stick to their original business plan. Get in on the emerging internet appliance market. Make royalties on all the pizza, book, and DVD sales. Sell access on top of all that. Getting caught up in one-time, dead-end sales of maybe $300 or $400 isn't where it's at for them.
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Several years ago, back when Comdex was still cool, I remember a Panasonic booth set up with ToughBook demonstrations. It looks like the product still exists, and they have a page dedicated to its MIL-STD-810F testing. It's not a marine standard per se, but it does cover shock, vibration, and exposure to both liquid water and excessive humidity.
I think they can be selling them at a loss. I think they are selling them at a loss.
Why?
Well, a quick look at their website gives a few indications:
This page talks about the "market situation." They expect the market for "internet appliances" to grow to over 50 million units by 2002. At the previous poster's estimate of $216 gross profit per unit, that'll get them $1.08B with only a 10% market share!
They are surely willing to sell these units at a loss in order to establish themselves as a leader in this emerging market.
As for the average life expectancy of the device being set at 2 years, I really think that's unreasonable. They have a USB port on the back, which would be a great place to plug in the "i-opener broadband adapter unit." And their embedded software allows automatic updates over the network, so any existing i-opener could automatically reconfigure for broadband over the dialup network. Pretty slick.
Finally, none of this even talks about what kind of money netpliance makes whenever somebody presses the pizza button. Or makes an online purchase through the i-opener consumer portal. Do you really think a pizza business doesn't pay royalties on pizza sales via i-openers? What about when 50 million people have internet appliances? I think most people would rather order pizza from an online menu than try to get it right over the phone. And most pizza places would be happy to get printouts of orders, rather than having to take them down over the phone.
If I had a nickel for every pizza delivery in the USA...
Anyway, it's pretty clear to me why netpliance wants to stick to their original business plan. Get in on the emerging internet appliance market. Make royalties on all the pizza, book, and DVD sales. Sell access on top of all that. Getting caught up in one-time, dead-end sales of maybe $300 or $400 isn't where it's at for them.