@vidarh

The theory of Apple is partial correct. And that is because Apple are actually selling PCs rebranded while the A1X1K would be highly customized. Heck, even the cpu must be ordered in big quantities if you want cut down some euros more. Apple may have bigger margin now, when it was on the ppc camp it hadn't.

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@ferrels

Quote:

Now Hyperion has chosen to lock OS4 into another closed hardware platform called the X1000. This will only serve to push Amiga further down into an already microscopic niche that most won't buy into, not even the most die-hard Amiga fans. As I said earlier, I can't imagine more than one or two hundred X1000s being bought. Most people won't be able to justify the cost, let alone afford one with a copy of OS4.

If Hyperion_A-EON only sell in the low to middle 3 digits, one has to wonder how they can justify to themselves a market that is not economically viable. They have the law suits behind them and all that entails, new hardware that is about the maximum anyone could expect in the PPC line, and with all this and they fail to generate sales would mean there is no market left to tap into.

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Dammy

@Cool_amigaN

Quote:

The theory of Apple is partial correct. And that is because Apple are actually selling PCs rebranded while the A1X1K would be highly customized. Heck, even the cpu must be ordered in big quantities if you want cut down some euros more. Apple may have bigger margin now, when it was on the ppc camp it hadn't.

The "theory" of Apple brought them from near bankruptcy with a collapsing market share to being the largest, or possibly top 2-3, computer makers (by market cap) in the world. And while I agree that on the *hardware side* it's not possible for, say, A-Eon to approach the margins Apple makes, it's certainly possible for them to have massively higher margins (in $ per unit, at least, perhaps not in percent at this stage) than an average PC maker.

The average PC desktop now sells for $550. Of that a manufacturer like Dell makes a *gross* margin of ca. $90 (compared to Apple average revenue per unit of ca. $1500, of which their gross margin is ca *$500*). Makers that rely on distributor networks make even less than that, typically.

Imagine trying to compete as a tiny player in that market. You'd be lucky if you make $50 gross margin per PC if you do small volumes of low end boxes (and the vast majority of the PC market today is low end boxes - average PC prices are steadily dropping, where Apple is managing to keep their average sales prices stable)

Even if the X1000 costs 3 times a new PC to manufacture, due to low volumes etc. and high cost of "high end" PPCs, it'd still be easily possible to price it for a gross margin in absolute terms ($, not percent) well above that, and likely well above Dell too without scaring off the Amiga market - even $90 extra, for twice Dells average profit margin, on a machine in the $1400-$1500 price point doesn't make all that much difference when there is no real competition (at least not anywhere near the same price point). That kind of margin can quickly be pushed higher if they manage to grow to decent, but still small, volumes.

I think the cost of the SAMs is pretty much proof that it's possible to produce an X1000 level machine around that mark - a couple of quick Google searches found me PPC CPU's in the required performance range that are cheap enough even in quantities as low as 100-200 units to make that possible even with very conservative/high estimates for the cost of the rest of the system.

This is even excluding the gross margins that Hyperion make on OS4 sales - the aggregate gross margin between the hardware and OS for the X1000 w/OS4 is likely to make PC makers look pitiful. Today it has to - or both of them will go bankrupt, since they have to amortize development costs and fixed costs over far smaller volumes than the PC makers can. But if they manage to grow the market, it also means the upside - like it was for Apple - is much greater.

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@damocles

Quote:

If Hyperion_A-EON only sell in the low to middle 3 digits, one has to wonder how they can justify to themselves a market that is not economically viable.

With "Apple-like" margins (in absolute $ terms), A-Eon would need to sell between 100 and 200 units _per skilled employee per year_ to even cover salaries, never mind recouping R&D costs, office costs and other fixed costs, which means their actual yearly unit needs would be far higher . With "Dell-like" margins they'll need to sell between 400 and 1000 units per employee per year to cover salaries alone.

I'd assume their margins would be somewhere between those extremes, but if they hope for this to be more than a very expensive hobby, I'd be shocked if A-Eon break even with less than a few thousand units in the first year alone.

Presumably they've done that maths before they started, as well as done some market research (such as talking to Hyperion about OS 4 sales). Make of that what you will in terms of what kind of market size they expect.

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@ferrels

If you are not careful your argument would mean that the A500 was nothing but a DRM module on Amiga OS when clearly that wasn't the case. One of the ideas behind the X1000 is to add new bits of hardware to give users a genuine reason to purchase it as it will do something no PC can. Of course whether this works out is a huge gamble for Hyperion/A-Eon.

If you are looking for a PC version of OS4 then that isn't going to happen so I would stop asking. On the other hand you could take a look at AROS which is offering the nearest thing.

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Sam

@vidarh

They'd better pull their finger out marketing wise pretty shortly or this is going to be an expensive flop! A fancy case prototype would do much to give the project a visual banner to get magazine's/ tech web pages interested again! The X-Core 'Xena' gimmick is not enough on its own to launch this product at the sort of quantities discussed! What is the unique selling point of a Xena? Why should it be up to developers to work out the uses of the Xena chip for A-EON? A-EON should do their own marketing and research into the uses of what they are selling!!!

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@vidarh

Quote:

Imagine trying to compete as a tiny player in that market.

Wrong market.

Quote:

But if they manage to grow the market, it also means the upside - like it was for Apple - is much greater.

It won't be just 'they', and the 'market' has been looking/waiting for just such hardware.

It is a better mousetrap. Want some cheese?

@vidarh

Quote:

With "Apple-like" margins (in absolute $ terms), A-Eon would need to sell between 100 and 200 units _per skilled employee per year_ to even cover salaries, never mind recouping R&D costs, office costs and other fixed costs, which means their actual yearly unit needs would be far higher . With "Dell-like" margins they'll need to sell between 400 and 1000 units per employee per year to cover salaries alone.

I would guess they are going to have four or so techs assembling the systems unless they are just shipping parts out to the resellers to assemble.

Quote:

I'd assume their margins would be somewhere between those extremes, but if they hope for this to be more than a very expensive hobby, I'd be shocked if A-Eon break even with less than a few thousand units in the first year alone.

If they have the techs, then your probably correct. If they are just shipping out the parts to the resellers, there might not be any skilled employees. They could just hire a drop shipper to drop system packages to the resellers as they order.

Quote:

Presumably they've done that maths before they started, as well as done some market research (such as talking to Hyperion about OS 4 sales). Make of that what you will in terms of what kind of market size they expect.

Some how, I highly doubt they did any significant market studies on this. Ben is apart of Hyperion, so he well knows what SAM440 unit sales are like for the past twelve months. I doubt sales have been significantly increasing over that period of time.

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Dammy

@ferrels

An x86 Amiga does not mean there are plenty of apps, see Aros.
The X1000 is besides the CPU, mostly standard pc-components and design IMHO.

@persia

Quote:

What is XMOS on the X1000 good for?

......for make discussions and flamewars in the Amiga forums

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No PowerPC, No Fun
Make Amiga Great Again

@BigD

Quote:

hey'd better pull their finger out marketing wise pretty shortly or this is going to be an expensive flop! A fancy case prototype would do much to give the project a visual banner to get magazine's/ tech web pages interested again!

Perhaps. But see the almost-not-quite backlash here because they went quiet? They can afford that within the Amiga community, where we're used to chaos and impending doom ever since the demise of Commodore. They can't afford to start talking much outside of the community until they have actual units to show and sales are right around the corner.

Anyway, I doubt many sales the first year or two will come from outside the Amiga community anyway.

And I do actually think they *can* meet those kind of numbers from the Amiga community if you include interested-but on the fence ex-Amiga users who has not been prepared to buy things like the SAM.

I've mentioned it before: There's no way Hyperion would survive, nor go through an expensive lawsuit or pay for OS developers if their AmigaOS revenue was based on a market in the hundreds.

Even 1000 units of OS4 sold a year would perhaps cover 2-3 man-years of work on reasonable salaries once general employment costs are accounted for, but not other costs like the lawsuit.

So either they've been bleeding money for a long time, or subsidizing OS4 development from other revenue, both of which would be really bad news as it'd mean the market is not at all viable, or more likely the potential market is larger than that when counting even just existing OS4 users.

Keep in mind there were millions of Amiga's sold. Even just 0.1% of the user-base sticking around and buying OS4 could mean 1k licenses a year sold.

To continue down that route briefly: I'm from Norway. There was an estimated 90k Amigas sold in Scandinavia. Assume that Norway makes up about 20% of that at most, for 18k. 0.1% of that again is 18. I could probably find far more Norwegian Amiga users than that on the few Amiga boards I follow just by counting *frequent / active posters*, never mind lurkers that may never surface.

In other words, I think most people here are severely underestimating the size of the total size of the Amiga market. No doubt it's small. But there's small, and then there's small.

Quote:

The X-Core 'Xena' gimmick is not enough on its own to launch this product at the sort of quantities discussed! What is the unique selling point of a Xena? Why should it be up to developers to work out the uses of the Xena chip for A-EON? A-EON should do their own marketing and research into the uses of what they are selling!!!

People should stop focusing so much on Xena. It's a cheap addition that adds a little bit of extra hack value for some niches. Users like me like it and want to play with it, and it *may* translate into a selling point in the future, but right now it's an actual selling point for a small number of people only.

And that is also why it should be up to developers to work out what to do with it - it'd be catastrophic for Hyperion or A-Eon to spend lots of resources on that instead of improving the core platform.

But the sheer amount of attention it has gotten has proven pretty much conclusively that including it was a shrewd marketing move. We're talking less than $10 cost per unit here, passed on to the customers (which Amiga user would reconsider a purchase over $10?) . Yet how many discussions has it spawned, including some interest from outside the Amiga community (the beauty of which is also that a lot of embedded people are used to paying through their teeth for development boards, many of which are PPC based - embedded devs using PPC and/or XMOS would be a great niche to attract)? It doesn't need to translate into many extra sales before it's paid for itself many times over.

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@damocles

Quote:

If they have the techs, then your probably correct. If they are just shipping out the parts to the resellers, there might not be any skilled employees. They could just hire a drop shipper to drop system packages to the resellers as they order.

Someone needs to manage the company. Someone needs to sign up dealers and deal with promotional material and do at least some very basic marketing. Someone needs to do te accounts. Someone needs to design the thing and design the case and design the packaging. Someone needs to handle warranties etc.

They can get away with not doing any of these things "in-house", but then they'll need to pay someone else (possibly dealers/distributors) to do it. It does not change the maths in their favor other than to the extent outsourcing it means not hiring someone full time for a function they only need part time.

Just recouping the design/development cost is going to require fairly "significant" sales numbers (at least compared to the market estimates bandied about by some people...)

Quote:

Some how, I highly doubt they did any significant market studies on this. Ben is apart of Hyperion, so he well knows what SAM440 unit sales are like for the past twelve months. I doubt sales have been significantly increasing over that period of time.

... and yet they're still going ahead. As much as it seems some of these guy do it more for the love than for the money, I doubt they're prepared to throw money at something they don't have reason to believe has at least some chance of success.

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I think X1000 has also potential to sell thousand(s) units to XCore application developers. There seem to be a lot of interest in the xcore community. But it means that there should be a state of the art xcore SDK for x1000.

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@vidarh

I'm sticking with the idea that there is a market for these boards outside of AmigaOS. Maybe they load them with this new fangled Linux thing and use them as dedicated XMOS programming tools. The key to XMOS is that you program them and then release them to do their tasks. Run robots, planes, sid synthesisers, etc. XMOS are designed to roam free.

Take these boards, put them in a different box, load them with a high powered optimised Linux for XMOS programming and you have a neat tool. The XMOS programmer sales subsidise AmigaOne sales and AmigaOS folks get a little toy to play with in as part of the bargain.

There's a use for these boards beyond AmigaOS, I'm certain of it.

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: I think X1000 has also potential to sell thousand(s) units to XCore application developers. There seem to be a lot of interest in the xcore community. But it means that there should be a state of the art xcore SDK for x1000.

Why should they buy a plus 1000 $ kit when a sub 100 kit does teh whole job and comes with a powerful develepment system (Eclipse)? I seriously doubt there will be many customers from the xmos community.

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MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: And yet another, xcore could be used also for some security enchancements. It might be able to improve security without causing much/any extra CPU load. (according to a recent x86 magazine, antivirus SW/suite can slow down 3Ghz Core2 system boot time almost 3x (from 100 seconds to 280 seconds)

Booting with a anitivirus software takes long not because of heavy computing, but because of scanning and checking many, many files. It will not save you any time if you offload the process to the XCore. Look for example modern multiprocessor systems. Most (if not all ) anitvirus software run on one core only. The system still takes that long for booting as you qouted. That's not about lack of cpu power, the limitation is throughput. The XMOS will not have a higher throughput than th ehost processor.

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MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

@vidarh

Quote:

vidarh wrote: @Cool_amigaN [quote] even $90 extra, for twice Dells average profit margin, on a machine in the $1400-$1500 price point doesn't make all that much difference when there is no real competition (at least not anywhere near the same price point).

Why should there no competition? Amiga is no south pacific island or North Corea. Of course there is competition: Dell, Asus, Apple, your local dealer, ebay. Computers are sold everywhere.
If you want an Amigaish system, you can chose from 68k emulated, AROS, MorphOS or OS 4. All these solutions need an invest lower than 400 US $ for pretty useable system. Only Amiga OS 4 is the only exception. There you will need to spend much more. And then the question is: Is the extra price worth the performance. Or in other words: Can the X1000 stand the competition.

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MorphOS user since V0.4 (2001)

@billt

You can run it as long as you like but at some point AmigaOS will "progress" beyond your antiquated hardware and you'll have to buy new hardware chained to AmigaOS....it's called planned obsolesence. Microsoft does does the same thing with Windows, AutoDesk does it with AutoCAD...

Do you really think Hyperion will focus on new releases, patches and updates for your existing system now that they've announced the X1000? Maybe in the short-term.

Last edited by ferrels on 24-Feb-2010 at 06:56 PM.

@vidarh

i do run a PC OS. I run several of them and they run rings around anything offered in Amiga land in terms of price, features and performance. if you're looking for nostalgia, stick to a classic Amiga or wait for a Natami or Replay board.

Continuing to push your user base into an ever increasing niche in terms of price isn't a business model headed for success. As for holes in the software, AOS4 has been out for years and the holes haven't been filled. Why would they get filled now when developers have to buy another even more expensive platform when they weren't developing for the LAST hardware platform?

@vidarh

Quote:

vidarh wrote: @BigD [quote] So either they've been bleeding money for a long time, or subsidizing OS4 development from other revenue, both of which would be really bad news as it'd mean the market is not at all viable.

The market is not sustainable. A good guess is that there are about 1000 active OS4 users and probably less than 2000 copies of 4.1 were sold yet.
And since it is unlikely that the X1000 will sell for less than 1000 US$ I very seriously doubt there will be much demand.
The Sam sold in very moderate numbers, the A1 sold in very moderate numbers, the Pegasos sold in higher numbers (there were a few volume deals), but still moderate (only in the some thousands range). And the Pegasos was not too outdated on apperance and had a competetive pricetag.

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