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The real money in electronics is in accessories. People will pay $25 for a Raspberry Pi and fret each additional dollar, then turn around and pay $20 for a inje

by MCRed 11y ago

The real money in electronics is in accessories. People will pay $25 for a Raspberry Pi and fret each additional dollar, then turn around and pay $20 for a injection molded case for it. If their strategy is to sell accessories then they $9 could be subsidized in that way. If you're like me, the $9 gets you in the door, then you load up your cart with everything you want and start thinking about the total price at around $100. Under $100 I think the typical "has a day job at a startup" technologist is not going to think twice. They just need to have enough compelling components to get the total order amounts up there.

tyingq 11y ago
Assuming they manage to avoid 3rd parties cloning accessories and undercutting on price. That seems to be the pattern in this market.
rogeryu 11y ago
> The real money in electronics is in accessories. People will pay $25 for a Raspberry Pi and fret each additional dollar, then turn around and pay $20 for a injection molded case for it. This may be true, but then you should make sure they buy them at your store. I've bought a Raspberry Pi, but case and sd-card were from a different brand. They didn't even have an official case back then. So how does this work? Or do they get a commission for every case? I bet not.
- foolinaround 11y ago
  Growth of the ecosystem will feed more growth, and overall, will increase visibility and sales, improving volume pricing... Yes, but needs to be managed well.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- hga 11y ago
  I have long thought the primary value of an [unnamed company] computer was in the casing. [unnamed company] has had such a focus almost from the beginning. A very nice and friendly plastic case, vastly superior to the ones from all their competitors, plus a switching power supply (vs. heavy and $$$ transformer) were the major initial differentiaters of their 2nd product, their 3rd major product critically failed in part because its developed early in the process case ended up being too small (although cheap sockets were the most critical failure), and when they bought a Cray, back when those were ultra cool, they justified it by saying how it would be used it to simulate injection molding and save on tooling costs. Getting back to the point of this subthread, I had contact with TI people (cloning the Lisp Machine with gate arrays, and otherwise saving LMI for a while) when they were using make it up with accessories strategy with their home PC. "We're shipping a $20 bill with every unit" one said, that would be $48 in 2015 dollars, and in the end they didn't make up the difference. Probably because the subsidized base unit you bought was "meh" in most every way, I can see a lot of people not being enthused enough by it and its software ecosystem to want to buy a lot more stuff, especially with more developed ecosystems by [unnamed company], Commodore, IBM, Tandy/Radio Shack, and the CP/M crowd.

by MCRed 11y ago

tyingq 11y ago

Assuming they manage to avoid 3rd parties cloning accessories and undercutting on price. That seems to be the pattern in this market.

rogeryu 11y ago

> The real money in electronics is in accessories. People will pay $25 for a Raspberry Pi and fret each additional dollar, then turn around and pay $20 for a injection molded case for it. This may be true, but then you should make sure they buy them at your store. I've bought a Raspberry Pi, but case and sd-card were from a different brand. They didn't even have an official case back then. So how does this work? Or do they get a commission for every case? I bet not.

foolinaround 11y ago
Growth of the ecosystem will feed more growth, and overall, will increase visibility and sales, improving volume pricing... Yes, but needs to be managed well.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

hga 11y ago
I have long thought the primary value of an [unnamed company] computer was in the casing. [unnamed company] has had such a focus almost from the beginning. A very nice and friendly plastic case, vastly superior to the ones from all their competitors, plus a switching power supply (vs. heavy and $$$ transformer) were the major initial differentiaters of their 2nd product, their 3rd major product critically failed in part because its developed early in the process case ended up being too small (although cheap sockets were the most critical failure), and when they bought a Cray, back when those were ultra cool, they justified it by saying how it would be used it to simulate injection molding and save on tooling costs. Getting back to the point of this subthread, I had contact with TI people (cloning the Lisp Machine with gate arrays, and otherwise saving LMI for a while) when they were using make it up with accessories strategy with their home PC. "We're shipping a $20 bill with every unit" one said, that would be $48 in 2015 dollars, and in the end they didn't make up the difference. Probably because the subsidized base unit you bought was "meh" in most every way, I can see a lot of people not being enthused enough by it and its software ecosystem to want to buy a lot more stuff, especially with more developed ecosystems by [unnamed company], Commodore, IBM, Tandy/Radio Shack, and the CP/M crowd.