Don't go so far as to point the finger of stupidity so fast. At the risk of dredging up yet another "old" piece of data, there was a time when Jensen Triax car speakers were extremely popular, and sold for $150 retail, with "sales" being $120-$125, and those were considered good prices. I happened to work at Sears at the time, and one day had the luck to see the actual invoice for an order of these speakers.
They were $15/pair for Sears.
Had anyone sold them for anything approaching that price, the would have been considered selling hot merchandise.
So, $80 may really be the true cost of the item, as we've seen them at retail for as low as $330 already, and that has to include a healthy mark-up.
The other thing is, 2.5 inch drives are old news now, and better for us, old technology. 20GB drives should be cheap. If you wonder how cheap drives can go, I just bought 5 36GB SCSI drives for <$40 each, when 6 months ago these same drives were selling for $220 or more. Matter of fact, you can still find them for that price.
So, the morale of the story is, let's wait and see if they ship, if they do, much of this will be moot.
yea, BUT...these aren't old technology. I remember hearing years ago that the cost of a PC was about 2% in raw materials. Were computer makers getting 98% profit on their boxes? NOPE. There are tons of other costs besides what seem obvious to everyday people. R&D, specialized computer chips, setting up machinery all cost money that make the first thousands manufactured so much more expensive than the last thousands. If these were old technology AND interest in them sucked, I could see a clearance price like this. Perhaps, this is a clearance of the 20 gig version. I hope it goes through. I think people will get more pissed if Dell sends out a cancellation email this late than if they would have done it within 24 hours. Dell has to know about this many orders, and they are probably trying to work a deal with the manufacturer so they can honor the deal. If Dell waits much longer, I can't see them having much credibility with any statement they may make as to why they are cancelling.
I know from selling computers for 5 years that the margins are extremely thin.....when Pentium 2s were selling we made about 4-8% profit at officemax.....this was back in day before "everyone" had a computer.....now days I imagine the margin being more thin....probablly around 3-5%
This is my first mis-priced deal...does it normally take 2 days to cancel? Seems like they would have taken action by now.
I work in the computer industry and Dell would be thrilled to make 10-20%% profit on a product like this selling at full price. My guess is these were sold at $230 loss each x 25k units=$5.75M loss total. If these ship I would be amazed.
Scubadiver
Senior member
- Dec 11, 2002
- 693
- 0
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Yeah, just read it 3 minutes later than you did.
1) granted - high tech is much more about manufacturing than material costs for things like this.
2) these aren't PCs. They're a simple consumer item
3) you can buy DVD/MP3 players for <$80 (Shows that full system is in price range)
4) the 2.5 inch 20GB drives are passe for just about anything these days, too small for notebooks, too big generally for "pocket" drives. Price for single item is <$80 18GB drive
So, put it all together, it seems that $80 might be a realistic cost for a mass produced consumer item like this.
You're forgetting...
1. Marketing
2. Shipping costs
3. Manufacturing overhead (i.e. profit for the companies that manufacture the device for the company that sells it, assuming Rio doesn't own the factories)
EDIT: I mean shipping costs from the manufacturer to the distributor, shipping costs for the items to be moved to the factory, etc.
1. Marketing - $0, let AT do it for you.....
2. Shipping - that $19 overnight thing ought to cover it - which most ATer's have been conditioned to do by now
3. Manufacturing overhead is already included in the "mass production" equation.
EDIT: BTW, what better way to advertise than sell 10 or 20K of these to ATers etc, and have them everywhere 2 months prior to XMas? All of a sudden, you have 10-20K people advertising them for you (provided they're good, of course, otherwise you have a PR nightmare on your hands)
Seriously, not everyone does marketing via the standard overpriced channels that are increasingly harder to get a message across.
2. Shipping - that $19 overnight thing ought to cover it - which most ATer's have been conditioned to do by now
3. Manufacturing overhead is already included in the "mass production" equation.
EDIT: BTW, what better way to advertise than sell 10 or 20K of these to ATers etc, and have them everywhere 2 months prior to XMas? All of a sudden, you have 10-20K people advertising them for you (provided they're good, of course, otherwise you have a PR nightmare on your hands)
Seriously, not everyone does marketing via the standard overpriced channels that are increasingly harder to get a message across.
doesn't look like any of us are going to get one
Of course there is the fact that this isn't a 2.5" drive as the player is smaller than a 2.5" drive.
Rio Karma Dimensions:
Dimensions: 2.7? X 3.0? X 1.1?
Weight: 5.5oz
2.5" drive you linked to:
Height .37" (12.5mm)
Width 2.75" (69.85mm)
Depth 3.94" (100mm)
Weight 4.9oz (140g)
This isn't a 2.5" drive, if anything it would be a 1.8" drive like the ipod uses. I'd like to see you find one of them for cheap.
I can't believe people are trying to justify that it was a sale price. It was a misprice. Get over it.
I'm not justifying anything and I just linked to something as an example. Also note that the price for 100K units of this type of thing will be a price you can't compare to anything you see for single drives, or even packs of 5 or 10. (Unfortunately, I haven't seen prices per 1000 for these types of drives)
I'm just saying that those that are absolutely dismissing this are blowing as much hot air as those insisting this will ship. You don't know, unless you've seen the actual invoice price or until it arrives. The price Dell quoted may be much closer to that real invoice price than anyone believes.
Me, I'm hopeful until I get either a cancellation notice or a box on my doorstep.
Personally, I don't understand the need of some to crap all over something, jealousy that they didn't get to try for it perhaps? If you don't like the thread - stop reading it.
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