Almost nobody buys macs except for the millions of people that do. Oh yeah and you can sell small amounts if your margins are high. Trust me this device isn't making much money for Creative.
When you sell an item for bottom dollar the only way to make profits is to sell a crapload. Apple doesn't deal with this market they would rather sell 1,000 with a profit of $40 per device then 10,000 with a profit of $4. On the outside these appear to be the same thing but the costs associated with trying to sell 10,000 will swallow up that $4 profit pretty quick.
@Mike Cerm >If you can buy one and like it, and it's profitable for Creative, who cares how many people buy it?
Well, ask the few (audiophiles and ethernet-centric geeks) who bought Rio Karmas. And then Rio went belly-up, presumably because not enough people bought it.
Creative won't go belly-up, I'm sure. But they could stop producing, and therefore supporting, MP3 players. Probably not an issue in this case, but it can matter.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Yet only 4 people will buy it...
Another zinger from creative.
the ifan boys really need to get more inventive on their insults.
@Jessy
Unfortunately, he is right. It's not an iPod -- it won't sell.
If you can buy one and like it, and it's profitable for Creative, who cares how many people buy it?
Almost nobody buys Macs, but does that matter to the people who use them and like them?
Almost nobody buys macs except for the millions of people that do. Oh yeah and you can sell small amounts if your margins are high. Trust me this device isn't making much money for Creative.
When you sell an item for bottom dollar the only way to make profits is to sell a crapload. Apple doesn't deal with this market they would rather sell 1,000 with a profit of $40 per device then 10,000 with a profit of $4. On the outside these appear to be the same thing but the costs associated with trying to sell 10,000 will swallow up that $4 profit pretty quick.
...of course theres always the china clone:
http://www.mp4nation.net/products/index.php?PID=xmas
@Mike Cerm
>If you can buy one and like it, and it's profitable for Creative, who cares how many people buy it?
Well, ask the few (audiophiles and ethernet-centric geeks) who bought Rio Karmas. And then Rio went belly-up, presumably because not enough people bought it.
Creative won't go belly-up, I'm sure. But they could stop producing, and therefore supporting, MP3 players. Probably not an issue in this case, but it can matter.
I work at Circuit City, and at least in store, we sell more of the regular Zen Stone than iPod shuffles