Referrals?


palmertech

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Mar 3, 2008
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I might be mistaken, but I believe that at least a few GP2X stores had a referral system where if they clicked on a link that belonged to you and bought a GP2X, you got cash (or maybe it was a store credit?). Is anything like this planned for the Pandora?
 
I doubt that this will be implemented at the time of launch as the Pandora should be flying out the door without the need for any incentive schemes.

Maybe further down the line, but then again..............only Craig, ED and Fatih can really answer this one.
 
Craigs store offers an affiliate/referrals program already that you should be able to join. Since he's one of the many money guys behind the device it should be safe to assume that he's going to be stocking the device. Sign up soon and you can start spamming your link around in time for the launch :P

Slightly off topic, but when was it claimed that they are going to be making hardly any profit from the Pandora? He's a business guy and the chances of him doing something like this where he wont be making much profit are pretty (very) slim. I have no doubt that he will be making a somewhat decent amount of money out of every Pandora sold.
 
Because the $330 price. Unless Craig plans on selling in quantities of 10K+, most of the parts are quite expensive. I believe the OMAP proc itself is on the order of $50 a chip. Then there is the memory, PCB, likely assembly, battery, touch screen, misc important IC's such as power management, wifi, etc. I'm pretty sure they are cutting it close.

Just because someone is a business guy doesn't mean they do everything for profit. There are plenty of things i do for my research that i do out of hobby and not for the research benefit although that is icing on the cake.
 
I'm going to assume that by 'not much' people are assuming his profit is going to be about 20% of each unit sold. He's not going to have spent in the region of $800,000 designing and building 3000 Pandoras in he hopes of making $190,000 (that's assuming he's making 20% profit from every Pandora sold, although 20% of that will be stolen by Gordon). He'd need to sell 2400 before he even breaks even. I'm guessing that it's going to be closer to about 40% at least.
 
I'd say 20% is probably itself way too high. More likely their profit margin is around ~5%. Unless he scales up to large batches, $300 sounds close to the BoM for such devices, in such small quantities.
 
I'd say that unless you've been personally involved in a manufacturing project like this, you probably aren't familiar with the actual "cost" of the project. You can't just look at the price of a box of parts and say "That is what it costs to make one". I'm sure it seems simple from a 3rd person perspective, but you can't imagine the incredibly steep non-material costs (your time and sanity) involved. Unless the company goes public (ha!) and is required to release their financial records, then it isn't really anybody else's business.

Any estimation on the Pandora's profit margin is not only baselessly speculative, it's also a bit rude.
 
Ok..... You don't seem to understand... BoM's put a minimum on the cost. They are an extremely common financial tool to estimate profit margins for products by anyone involved in business other then the company itself.

To an extent I do agree that it can be rude, but it's not unusual. Even if the company stays private, speculating on profit margins is going to happen, and it's definitely people's business. Would you buy a product knowing that the company that sells it is going to go bankrupt? This is what people in the financial sector do, whether the company is public, private, or government owned.
 
Im a hardware designer by day, gamer at night.

My guess is they are loosing money on the deal if you account for the time and resources spent outside of the BOM. Heck the touch screen itself is probably > $150 in those quantities. Factor another $20 battery, and $30-$50 for the OMAP, ~$50 for the PCB depending on # of layers and manufacturer, you're looking at ~$250 not counting case and other parts.

My opinion is they are probably close to breaking even on the parts for the initial 3000, and in the red if you account for the time spent designing. But thats not why you do a project like this, you do it to gain exposure and experience for when you design your first for profit consumer electronic. aka. Pandora 2!
 
Or for a hobby :P
Hell, If I found out about Pandora earlier, I would have volunteered my time. I like these kind of projects, have some decent circuit design skills( not great at layout though ), and I'm pretty good at haggling companies to allow me to buy samples for hobbyist purposes :P
 
Kevin_H said:
Im a hardware designer by day, gamer at night.

My guess is they are loosing money on the deal if you account for the time and resources spent outside of the BOM. Heck the touch screen itself is probably > $150 in those quantities. Factor another $20 battery, and $30-$50 for the OMAP, ~$50 for the PCB depending on # of layers and manufacturer, you're looking at ~$250 not counting case and other parts.

My opinion is they are probably close to breaking even on the parts for the initial 3000, and in the red if you account for the time spent designing. But thats not why you do a project like this, you do it to gain exposure and experience for when you design your first for profit consumer electronic. aka. Pandora 2!

Actually, the screen price is definitely wrong. Being the paranoid person I am, i looked for a place where I could buy replacement touch screens for the Pandora (It has the same screen as the Archos 605 wifi). I can buy a replacement, in quantitys of just 1, for 89.99. If I order 99 or more, it is only $54.99. No way it cost them $150 in quant. 3000. That alone gives them a good extra $100 per unit, according to your estimate.
 
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palmertech said:
Kevin_H said:
Im a hardware designer by day, gamer at night.

My guess is they are loosing money on the deal if you account for the time and resources spent outside of the BOM. Heck the touch screen itself is probably > $150 in those quantities. Factor another $20 battery, and $30-$50 for the OMAP, ~$50 for the PCB depending on # of layers and manufacturer, you're looking at ~$250 not counting case and other parts.

My opinion is they are probably close to breaking even on the parts for the initial 3000, and in the red if you account for the time spent designing. But thats not why you do a project like this, you do it to gain exposure and experience for when you design your first for profit consumer electronic. aka. Pandora 2!

Actually, the screen price is definitely wrong. Being the paranoid person I am, i looked for a place where I could buy replacement touch screens for the Pandora (It has the same screen as the Archos 605 wifi). I can buy a replacement, in quantitys of just 1, for 89.99. If I order 99 or more, it is only $54.99. No way it cost them $150 in quant. 3000. That alone gives them a good extra $100 per unit, according to your estimate.
Unfortunately, I would say his estimate on the PCB is low. It is probably double that. The Omap Proc is listed as $58 in 100 unit batches on the TI website. Digikey and mouser (the only listed distributors), have samples at $65 a pop.
Where certain items aren't too bad in 'small' batches, others don't really reduce in cost until you hit the bulk mass marketing volumes. PCB, ICs, Battery, and Case are 4 major areas where you don't see product pricing drop till you hit quantities on the order of 10K. Also, where did you find that price for the screen?
 
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I have looked all over, but it seem that that screen is gone! I checked right after they let slip what kind it was... I actually thought that $89 was a rip off, especially since you can buy a new Archos 605 for about $150. You are right though, a 4ah LiPo battery would cost upwards of $60 pretty easily.
 
palmertech said:
I have looked all over, but it seem that that screen is gone! I checked right after they let slip what kind it was... I actually thought that $89 was a rip off, especially since you can buy a new Archos 605 for about $150. You are right though, a 4ah LiPo battery would cost upwards of $60 pretty easily.
Yah, and their BoM is probably ~ $100, but that is in quantities of well over 10K, likely in the 100K range if not more. They probably use that screen on quite a few of their devices, so their pricing could easily be for very large quantities, at which we can no longer reasonably speculate on the price. The 3k batch size that Pandora is going to be released in for at least the first batch, is a quantity where it is fairly reasonable and accurate to speculate on.
 
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