David I understand and appreciate your opinion. See my TOTALLY PERSONAL comments in line marked $$RKJ
NOTE I am NOT attacking Wolfgang (he is a legend quite honestly). Although I am not a True Believer in Copyleft Hardware philosphy I think it is very interesting. Time will tell if it evolves into a commercially viable business model. The probability of seeing a Nanonote derivative from Sharism in next 18 months is quite low, Wolfgang has his hands full with Ben Nanonote software support, small HIGHLY desirable add-ons such as atBen and AT USB that Werner has designed, plus the BIG job involved re: Milkymist. Oh by the way, he maintains our servers, and designs new business processes to make this all work. I have come to understand that there is a major shortage of both human capital and financial resources. Ben is what it is. I hope to restrain myself from speculating about cool ways one might leverage a future Nannote derivative if one had the resources. But it has been fun, and thanks for all the fish. [big smile] --- Ron K. Jeffries On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:36, David Kuehling <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>>> "Ron" == Ron K Jeffries <[email protected]> writes: > >> Hi David, Understood, but the operative phrase is "for what I want to >> use it [Nanonote] for" > > Maybe "what I want to use the Nanonote for" is not the best question to > ask? Trying to make it do just everything and be of limitless power, > might result in an inferior product in many ways (price, size, > development time, ease of use etc.). > > I'm not per se against improving the nanonote's capabilities, but seeing > how people started lengthly wishlists I felt that the contrary viewpoint > would be lost. IMO the Ya Nanonote wiki page ( > http://en.qi-hardware.com/wiki/Ya_NanoNote_Specs ) suffers from the same > problem. $$RKJ that's true, IMO that page needs to be deleted. It was what several of us were talking about starting about September 2009. It is not current, and might mislead someone to think there is actually any PLANNING for a Ya Nanonote. [that is simply factual] >> 1) what are bullet points describing your use case? > > - image viewer > - programmable calculator > - development board for testing ported software $RKJ Noted >> 2) given your desires, if Ya Nanote can? >> --do everything Ben Nanote does as well or better >> --stay about the same size >> --sell for a similar or slightly higher price (at first) > >> Ya should be all that, plus ALSO have desirable new features to >> GREATLY increase number of prospective customers, including possible >> high volume sales. > >> Does that sound like a plan? > > Every feature added adds X customers, but looses Y customers who won't > be willing to pay a higher price. Sounds like a lot of tough decisions > to make. BTW I'd claim that "simplicity" is a feature that can attract > customers, too :) $$RKJ agree, simplicity is valuable. Not sure what price point you think the device needs to hit. I think a more capable model can be sold (AT FIRST, until volumes ramp up) at $125 USD. In fact if I was product manager, I'd set that as the parameter and do trade-offs so cost of goods (bill of material plus manufacturing overhead) supports the target. I would expect that in higher volume cost would drop quickly so the device can sell at $99 USD (or less) with adequate profit margins. Right now, I think Wolf makes a gross profit of about $40 per unit. His problem is not gross margin, it is LACK OF SALES VOLUME. as cool as Ben is, Sharism has sold well less than 2,000 units. (prolly about 1,500 max in just about 12 months. That is TINY volume. I have no idea how sharism keeps the doors open. Yes I do: very lean operation, almost no employees and low over all cost structure. > >> My UNOFFICIAL analysis indicates Ya can not be ready any sooner than >> 12 to 18 months from now. That says Spring 2012 earliest, Christmas >> 2012 latest. If those dates can't be made, the project doesn't make >> sense, because the world moves on. By 2013 the specs of Ya will >> already be low end, but should sell (at some unknown rate...) to those >> who treasure freedom. > >> Obviously Ben Nanonote would continue to be available. It may make >> sense to continue to offer Ben after Ya is shipping, assuming Ben has >> ~significantly~ lower price. Ben would be the cheap non-connected > > From the keep-it-simple-stupid viewpoint I'd rather not like to have to > deal with two devices. Having to maintain firmware for both adds extra > work. Maybe it's overal cheaper to just give Ben owners a discount for > the Ya upgrade? $$RKJ I think you keep your Ben and use it forever until you wear out all the keys down to a nub. Yeah, It would be a sound idea to offer the new model with a nice discount to BEN owners, FOR A LIMITED TIME, such as a short number of months say 6 months. My guess is about 1/3 of Ben Owners will buy the next model. Maybe 1/2 best case. But that is not the point. The features and price need to attract a WHOLE NEW set of prospective buyers. > > cheers, > > David > -- > GnuPG public key: http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~dvdkhlng/dk.gpg > Fingerprint: B17A DC95 D293 657B 4205 D016 7DEF 5323 C174 7D40 > > _______________________________________________ > Qi Hardware Discussion List > Mail to list (members only): [email protected] > Subscribe or Unsubscribe: > http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion > _______________________________________________ Qi Hardware Discussion List Mail to list (members only): [email protected] Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
