A Statement about Froyo

Originally Posted by StevenP

Boris, one would think that, but, from what some people have posted on this forum about the HSN reviews being so negative (everyone giving one star reviews) it was very concerning to me.

Perspective. Supposedly some 13-14,000 units were sold. You'll always have a small number of dissatisfied customers. I don't know how many 1-star reviews there were, but that number should be compared with the total number sold. Also, I believe people are quicker to post negative reviews rather positive experiences. In short, I'm guessing the vast majority are pleased with their PE rather than the opposite.

I think you are exactly right that negative reviews are much more likely to be written than happy customers writing about their good experiences. While only HSN and Entourage know the truth, I am highly skeptical of the sales number of 13-14,000. While we have NO data to go on, I doubt this figure. For one thing, I would have expected a bigger uptick in Forum activity. I just dont think HSN has any motivation to give the real numbers.

Interestingly, the forum highest online count was 457 on the morning of the HSN run. Compare to the previous value that was between 50 and 100.

I have no formal way to deduce how many people would be on the forum if 14,000 were sold, and I agree that 457 is a definite uptick. But I still have no confidence in that number given that it is from HSN. I wonder how many of those were just looking for info before they buy and how many actually ordered.

You know, I don't really think 14k is that many, and I'm not sure why very many people would come to these forums once they purchased. I found it by accident when I was searching Google for an academic ereader, but why would you go to Entourage's web site? I would assume the manual (assuming there is one) would have contact information for support. Unless that contact information is "go to our web site" I don't know why the vast majority of people would come here.

I don't know. Just my $.02

And I would still like to see the actual reviews on HSN, personally.

EDIT: Nevermind. I guess you'd come to the web site for apps, books, accessories, etc. Duh!

Originally Posted by borisb

The PE appears to be designed for more mass market appeal rather than the perhaps more limited academic market of the EE. As such the PE should sell in much greater numbers (simply from the larger potential customer base) and therefore generate a healthy pool of funds to fuel the continued development of the EE. More funds --> more R&D. Or at least that's my hope

But then they would lose the "we're just a poor little startup" excuse for their shoddy upgrading schedule and general hostility toward independent developers.

Also, if the PE is as profitable as you suppose, I don't see why they would shunt money away from a profitable device to support an unprofitable one (EE).

In business it's common to use the greater revenues from one line of business to fund other lines of business. It's like the traditional family where the one bread winner fed the whole family.

What evidence do you have that the EE is unprofitable?

Originally Posted by StevenP

some people have posted on this forum about the HSN reviews being so negative (everyone giving one star reviews) it was very concerning to me. They made it sound like they were being returned in droves. I really hope this wasn't the case.

I took a look at the reviews. For the over 14,000 PE's sold (as confirmed by enTourage in another post), there are less than 200 posts. Half of these posts are 2 stars or less out of 5. Half are 4 or 5 stars. This means of the tiny percentage (1.5%) that posted reviews, only half (or less), i.e. less than 1 percent, were actually unhappy enough with their purchase to post a negative review. To me, that's probably pretty typical of any electronic gadget sold, even iStuff.

Originally Posted by borisb

In business it's common to use the greater revenues from one line of business to fund other lines of business. It's like the traditional family where the one bread winner fed the whole family.

That usually only occurs when the other lines of business are indirectly helping the profitable line. eg, unprofitable gasoline sales bringing customers into the convenience store to buy profitable snacks and sodas. I don't see that happening with the EE and PE.

Of course, the purpose of a business is very different from the purpose of a family.

A family needs to grow and branch out, no?

Originally Posted by jsfiller

What evidence do you have that the EE is unprofitable?

Indeed.

If you have Product A that has a net profit of $10, and Product B that has a net profit of $50, you'd say that both are profitable but Product B is more profitable. But if you sell 100 units of Product A and only 5 products of Product B, you'll see that it's not a question of profitable vs unprofitable, but rather which generates more revenue. Product A has the lower profit margin but has brought in $750 more than the much more "profitable" Product B. (Note that the profitability and sales numbers of the EE and PE - other than the over 14K PE's sold via HSN - have not been disclosed by enTourage, but it doesn't even matter if or which of the PE or EE is more profitable as this is a numbers game.) Bottom line, you now have a combined net profit of $1250 dollars in the pot to spend on continuing R&D (not to mention salaries and operational costs ).

Keep in mind that the EE and PE are very similar, so a large portion of the software development put into one will benefit the other because of the (assumed) shared codebase. For example, it doesn't matter which on device you get landscape on the eReader working because the same code and the same app will also work on the other device.

This is why I see the large number of PE sales as good for both the PE and EE.

Gotta agree with you, Boris.

+1 for Boris (and the reiteration of landscape on the eInk )

I seriously doubt the EE has a higher per-unit profit margin than PE, given that the difference in cost is only $100 and EE has much more screen space and probably a more powerful processor. Even if it does, one would think that a business would favor a product line with higher total profits (rather than the higher marginal profits). If Phillips makes $20 per DVD recorder they sell, vs $1 for every blank DVD, you can bet they're going to give preference to their blank DVD manufacturing if they ever have to make a choice between them.

Keep in mind that the EE and PE are very similar, so a large portion of the software development put into one will benefit the other because of the (assumed) shared codebase. For example, it doesn't matter which on device you get landscape on the eReader working because the same code and the same app will also work on the other device.

Then how do you explain Android 2.2 being ported to PE first, with EE users not even given the option of upgrading to 2.2 at that time? If the software were the same, they could tell us that we could upgrade if we wanted to (if we accept the risk of decreased performance that dontpanic warned us about). But it's likely the software isn't really the same.