On Sunday 12 November 2000 00:03, Franck Martin wrote:
| Well,
| Create a new company called MandrakePC or Lothar(?) or Narda(?) owned by
| Mandrake. So if the Mandrake PC does not work it does not bring down the
| whole company...
I was really surprised to see such opinion. Ok, we live in Open World,
everybody can have own opinion.
I didn't want to reply to Gary's message and start any thread, but now I
think I have to reply.
NEVER GO FOR SUCH THING. (own PC/PC company/etc.)
You will acquire fixed costs immediately, have to sign long-term contracts
while it's not clear how succesful such project can be.
Here in Russia, brand name PCs (Compaq, HP, IBM , Dell, etc.) account only
for 10%, max 15% of total PC shipments. Many companies tried to created
"national" brand but most of them failed. You can add 10% markup on component
cost when you start business.
When it grows further, you need to reqruit sales force, engineers,
testing/service facilities and finally managers. All it brings additional
costs. It's ok when business is growing. But one day it will go down. Then
you will have immediate loss which can lead you to bancrupcy.
Further, you will have to put money on marketing side. It's investment, and I
know just few examples, when investment really was returned back.
When you are Coca-Cola and have 70% gross margin - you can spend half of
gross profit on marketing, investment doesn't return (sales not growing) and
it is still ok. For PC hardware, margins are low, about 20% for desktops
(combined value/business/performance segments) and close to zero on consumer
PCs and low-end business. No chance how you can absorb loss with such margin.
that's why for example IBM exited US Retail PC market.
Look on biggest PC players.
Compaq, IBM, PackardBell NEC, HP - have continues problems with PC divisions
for last 2-3 years. Only DELL was lucky to deliver better results, but now it
has problems as well.
Linux-based appliances can be very succesful, but Mandrake doesn't have
embedded Linux project. /may be it's tim eto strart it?/
But, for consumer products like Internet appliances you need to have
manufacturing capacity. You will not be able to outsource it and still have
margin, as prices will go down for such devices very fast.
|
| Start to sell a Mandrake PC in France, then in Europe. The market there
| is more receptive to a non-american supplier, then do the same in US... At
| the moment the Euro is so low, that building anything in europe is cheaper
| on the export market than US or Asia products...
There are other curriencies which are weaker then Euro.
That's not the reason to place production in Western Europe.
Eastrn Europe will be much better choice, for sure.
But remember that all components are priced in dollars. PC assembly itslef
cost max. $10. Assemblyng PC for 10 Euro will save you max. $1.
|
| And please hire a crasy designer to make the box, and do not respect the
| standard PC format.... Make a box very small like the IPac, a rack, and a
| bigger box with IDE Raid1.
Do you know how much such designer will cost?!
And minimum production volume?
You need to be on Top 5 PC manufacturer list to relly play with such things.
Apple has so many problems with supply/oversupply just because it is very
small company, comparing to leading PC vendors.
|
| I buy here in Fiji, MGEUPS made in France cheaper than the APC
| products...
And, you can't compare MG UPS quality with APC's quality.
/just think: why APC has > 50% market share? /
| Cheers...
Everything the best!
And let's appoint separate list for this discussion, I hope Mandrake
management will be interested to hear input from the field, And we will be
gald to share our opinions. Just let's do it not on Cooker, but on another
list.
|
| Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote:
| > Why not be a hardware manufacturer?
| >
| > Well, in a word, "Shipping". The shipping of a full PC is a
| > nightmare, and to do so internationally is twice the bother. Dell
| > does it, as does Cobalt, but Dell is huge and the other Linux-iron
| > vendors are not doing very well.
Exactly. They are not doing very well - take VA Linux, and Cobalt (now bought
by Sun)
| > This is tangental to my proposal, but what I would prefer is to do
| > what Microsoft has done with their "White Box" program --- despite the
| > name, this is not just "Windows on a generic PC", but a trademark name
| > for a specific set of hardware components which can be reliably
| > assembled. It's a recipe for a hardware box which you can license to
What is the value to customer? And what's differentiation from others?
/taking Value Chain approach to understand possible strategic benefits/
| > Gary Lawrence Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> TeleDynamics Communications
--
Vadim Plessky
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