[ale] Has the IT market bottomed out?

[hirsch at zapmedia.com]

This is right.  Another way to lower the price is to build a fancy
customized assemply system.  It costs a lot up front, but if you
spend the time and money to build the tools to make the device
(injection molding, or custom sheetmetal cutters, etc) the per unit
costs can be much lower.  But you need a whole heck of a lot of units
to amortize the expense.  If you are selling enough units you might
even build a whole factory for them (think chips or cars).

--Michael

Christopher Fowler writes:
 > The problem with creating such a small beast lies in unit numbers.  
 > What you describe would be nice but would not be much cheaper than the 
 > current product.  The key yo keeping embedded products cheap is in unit 
 > numbers.  The higher the unit numbers the cheaper your components are 
 > going to be.  In the Xbox case, the cost of goods were higher than the 
 > sales price of the unit.  In this case you only recover in 2 ways.
 > 
 > 1) Unit numbers rise and cogs decrease
 > 
 > 2) add-ons such as games bring in enough
 >    profit to cover the losses.
 > 
 > Embeded boards are not cheap.  
 > 
 > > Hey,
 > > I liked the zapmedia product.  But did you ever thing of doing a 
 > lower end
 > > model?  Say just a simple device that would connect to the input of a 
 > stereo
 > > and be networked to a PC?   The PC would have a spool much like a 
 > printer
 > > spool (queue) that would send the file over to the device ether 
 > wireless or
 > > hardwired?  The device would convert the spool files to audio.  I 
 > think most
 > > of the stuff is already on the market would just have to piece it 
 > together
 > > and write an application, (Easier said than done. LOL)
 > > 
 > > Adrin
 > > I should go to bed now.
 > > 
 > > 
 > > -----Original Message-----
 > > From: hirsch at zapmedia.com [mailto:hirsch at zapmedia.com]
 > > Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 10:41 PM
 > > To: Mark E. Schill
 > > Cc: Joseph A Knapka; jeff hubbs; Tommie M. Jones; ale at ale.org
 > > Subject: Re: [ale] Has the IT market bottomed out?
 > > 
 > > 
 > > Mark E. Schill writes:
 > >  > That sounds like a good idea actually. Any thoughts on a project??
 > > 
 > > I'll tell you what I really want on linux--a project management
 > > application like Mocrosoft project, only better of course.  Back when
 > > ZapMedia was large enough to have a bureaucracy I had to have a
 > > windows box to run MS project, and I couldn't point to any equivalent
 > > Linux tool.
 > > 
 > > --Michael
 > > 
 > >  >
 > >  > Mark
 > >  >
 > >  >
 > >  > Joseph A Knapka wrote:
 > >  >
 > >  >
 > >  > "Mark E. Schill" wrote:
 > >  >
 > >  > Yeah,
 > >  >
 > >  > I was planning on looking for a house in May, but that of course 
 > has
 > >  > been
 > >  > put on hold indefinitely. The other thing that drives me crazy is 
 > that
 > >  > lack
 > >  > of work. I am incredibly bored since I lost my job and I can't 
 > spend
 > >  > money
 > >  > on doing anything.
 > >  >
 > >  >
 > >  > Write a killer open-source app, release it, and watch the
 > >  > job offers start rolling in...
 > >  >
 > >  > </not-sure-if-that-requires-a-sarcasm-tag-or-not>
 > >  >
 > >  > -- Joe
 > > 
 > > ---
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 > should be
 > > sent to listmaster at ale dot org.
 > > 
 > > 
 > > ---
 > > This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
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 > should be 
 > > sent to listmaster at ale dot org.
 > > 
 > > 
 > > 




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