Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Kentucky
Posts: 5

Visor Prices Drop AGAIN!

I can see prices dropping after a few months, but every couple of weeks is getting ridiculous.

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: dynamic!
Posts: 189

why ridiculous

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"The Greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge." -- Daniel Borstin

Last edited by mrknowitall on 02-15-2002 at 10:18 PM

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: El Segundo,CA
Posts: 374

Pros dropped to $229, Neos to $169.

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My Treo has more memory than I do.

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Rochester, NY
Posts: 284

I think we can chalk this up to "Foot in Mouth" disease.

Sounds to me like Handspring's trying to clear the backlog in the channel, and since they've announced to the world that they're no longer going to be producing the Visor, they're having a hard time getting rid of them. Why by a device that's no longer going to be produced in an industry where production == support?

Or should this be known as "The Palm Effect"?

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It's gotta be weather balloons. It's always weather balloons. Big, fiery, exploding weather balloons.
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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: I'm not sure, but I see lots of lights everywhere.
Posts: 1287

God, I'm actually starting to feel sorry for this company. Handspring was once the up and coming star of the industry...now they can't even give their products away.

How the mighty have fallen...

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My blog: Pocketfactory

Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 48

$229 for the Pro. Come on, you can get the Sony S360 for $200 which has the same features as the Pro. The only difference is that the Pro has springboard. They need to drop it to $190 to stay competitive.

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 1571

Re: Visor Prices Drop AGAIN!

quote:

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Originally posted by xeyeder
I can see prices dropping after a few months, but every couple of weeks is getting ridiculous.

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Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Fairfax Station, VA
Posts: 17

As a consumer, price cuts certainly are desirable. However, in trying to fathom what is going on with Handspring, this herky-jerky cutting of prices is somewhat mysterious.

Is HS indeed recognizing that their newest products are overpriced relative to the market and are just trying to be competitive?

Or are they clearing inventory for newer products to be released? (I certainly hope so...I want that hi-res color screen with Prism brightness)

Or are they truly going down the road described by Donna and eliminating organizer products to be exclusively in the Treo device business?

Or...this is getting on shakey speculative ground...is this apparent movement of inventory to make them more attractive for purchase by a communciations oriented company that is only interested in the Treo (I'll certainly defer on this speculation to someone who has any level of business awareness...which I don't have [I sold HS stock at 81 and then bought back in at 36...talk about bad business sense!]

Registered: Nov 2000
Location: sOuThErN kaLi
Posts: 462

It's good the sense that those handspring users left can get nice deals on accessories, modules, and even new units. Though, who knows what they'll be worth in the future, and about support. Maybe they'll become valuable because they're no longer avaliable! It's sad for Handspring, but the Treo sounds promising, and I love the idea of wireless. I really hope they do well in this new market or "communicators." Once I can convince my mom why I should have a cell phone, I'd go for a Treo . In the meantime, Sony is keeping us busy with all their new fabulous units. No worries guys! Everything will be ok! Between Sony, Handspring, HandEra, and Palm, the Rebel Alliance will fend off the Imperial Troops!

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nelson.hsieh
good artists copy, great artists steal. . .

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Kentucky
Posts: 5

Sorry I posted!

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Alabama, USA
Posts: 92

Don't be

quote:

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Originally posted by xeyeder
Sorry I posted!

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Don't be sorry. The wonderful thing about this site(and on-line forums in general) is to hear everyones point of view. There have been posts that I've made that 80% of all who responded didn't agree. Nothing wrong with that, infact makes for some interesting discussion.

As an example: why do you feel the price drop is "ridiculous"? Is it that you think that HS is dumping inventory to go to new models or that they just aren't able to sell after Handsprings statement that the Visors will eventually be discontinued? Your statement was wide open for interpretation at various levels, it was not exactly specific why you felt it was ridiculous.

If anything, be more descriptive about your point of view (say more, not less). Most of all, keep posting. We're all a relatively friendly bunch of folks.

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My little girl is 3. She can already navigate my VisorPrism and knows where to tap! She has mastered TealPaint (including changing colors, tools, etc.), not to mention several games. In the Avatar, she is playing some tunes on the SoundsGood MP3 player. It's amazing how fast kids can learn if you give them a chance. Now if I could just keep her from making those long distance calls on my VisorPhone...

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: The Good OL' USA
Posts: 7

Actually, this forum is one of the least friendly I've encoutered. There is somewhat of an in crowd and everyone else. I questioned something Handspring had done once and the next thing I know I was labled a Handspring Basher and a Handspring Hater. I was just about to buy a Handspring at the time but it upset me so much I chose a differant product. I'm sure most of you think that is lame, but in the end it hurt Handspring (for at least one handheld sale).

So why am I here now? I love PDA's and PDA talk. I have bought several differant brands, Palm, Sony, Casio, and I enjoy them all. Of all people to be labled a Handspring Basher, even though I've never owned one, I've talked them up to all my friends. Up till that point anyway.

I am sorry to see they are (maybe) not going to make PDA's anymore. They had an awsome product. Still may have to buy a Prism if the price is right.

Captain, would you like me to raise the Flame Shield? Right away Scotty!

Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by Vxpalmer
Actually, this forum is one of the least friendly I've encoutered.

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Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 37

Actually, I can see the original poster's point of view.

I think price drops are a bad thing when they happen every other week. It's just bad marketing.

The last thing you ever want to do is make your current customers feel ripped off. When you drop a price once after a product has been out for a long time (six months or more), people accept that. Sure, there are a few late comers who bought at the higher price yesterday, but those are few and far between. At least the early adopters can feel as if they were ahead of the game for six months or so. Most companies will offer price protection within 10 days for folks who just bought something that is now marked down, anyway.

When you drop the price, and then drop it again a few weeks later, however, you make a lot more people upset. All the people who were waiting for that price drop and then bought now feel like you're jerking them around. You also scare investors and potential customers away, because they think you'll just keep dropping the prices. Even if you're dropping the prices on several items, it's best to do them all at once, and only once. Then there are no questions about whether you'll do it again. There also won't be as much rampid speculation as to whether or not you're about to release new models.

Speaking of which, it's a similar situation with new models of products. I work at the Apple Store part time, and you'd be amazed at how many people expect Apple to release a flat panel iMac with an even bigger screen in the next few months. I keep telling them they're out of their minds, but they don't want to listen. Why would a company want to take preorders for over 150,000 new computers, and then release an even better version a few weeks later? One, the current product is selling, so there's no need to give anyone incentive to buy. Two, all the people who have bought want to feel like they have the best and brightest at least for a few months.

You should never take that away from people.

The same thing happened with iPod. Every day, I had to tell people there was no way Apple would release a larger-capacity version anytime before July or August of this coming year. Yet, they were all convinced it would be out before Christmas.

I think it's time we started requiring Business 101 in most high school curriculums. It would be a lot easier for companies to make money and therefore keep making great products if they didn't have to fight consumer ignorance on a regular basis.


And no, by the way, this isn't the friendliest of forums in which to participate. But it's certainly not the worst, either. I can see why some people would be discouraged from posting here, for fear of criticism. But that's the nature of forums, isn't it? The people who are willing to hoist their opinions strongly, ( i.e. the ones who fake the most confidence), soon take over the show, while others who may have valid points but are afraid to be forceful get shut out. There's nothing you can really do about that. It's social darwinism. It's how the world is run.

I'm not saying that anyone here is really nasty, or anything. I don't think anyone here is. But there's definitely a "you're wrong, and I'm going to tell you why" kind of aggression that the average person would be turned off by. The bottom line is that most people aren't strong enough to stand by their own opinions, so they get put down easily. And some people (not all, but some) take advantage of that ease by jumping at every opportunity to prove someone wrong. Even when they don't mean to.

I say to xeyeder that you should keep posting anyway. No one here is an expert on anything. Otherwise we'd have better things to do with our time. Don't let anyone push you around. Here, or anywhere else. Chances are, people aren't intending to be so forceful. They're just passionate about their opinions.

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mrjoec
www.mrjoec.com

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: The Good OL' USA
Posts: 7

Yes, I do believe I was using a differant name at the time, although I don't recall what it was. Remembering login names and passwords is not one of my specialties.

Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by Vxpalmer
Yes, I do believe I was using a differant name at the time, although I don't recall what it was. Remembering login names and passwords is not one of my specialties.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by mrjoec
Actually, I can see the original poster's point of view.

I think price drops are a bad thing when they happen every other week. It's just bad marketing.

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It seems to be prevalent in the home computer/electronics space. If you buy a home computer, I'd expect it to be priced less within two weeks.

quote:

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The last thing you ever want to do is make your current customers feel ripped off. When you drop a price once after a product has been out for a long time (six months or more), people accept that. Sure, there are a few late comers who bought at the higher price yesterday, but those are few and far between.

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You haven't bought anything from someone like Dell recently, have you? I get prices from them fairly often at work, and I've had price drops of a few hundred dollars from one week to the next.

quote:

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At least the early adopters can feel as if they were ahead of the game for six months or so. Most companies will offer price protection within 10 days for folks who just bought something that is now marked down, anyway.

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It doesn't strike me that such a thing would make good business sense, and that's coming from someone who was an early adopter of the Edge. I don't feel ripped off by them dropping the price. I feel more ripped off because they couldn't think of a simple thing like static electricity being the most likely cause for its early problems.

quote:

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When you drop the price, and then drop it again a few weeks later, however, you make a lot more people upset. All the people who were waiting for that price drop and then bought now feel like you're jerking them around. You also scare investors and potential customers away, because they think you'll just keep dropping the prices.

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If Dubinsky hadn't made the silly statement she did at that earnings call, I'd bet that the current speculation would be running rampant about Handspring's redoing their entire line in color. Until then, their stock was coming back from the toilet like gangbusters. Even as it is, it's still 2-3 times better off than it was before the Treo announcement.

quote:

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Even if you're dropping the prices on several items, it's best to do them all at once, and only once. Then there are no questions about whether you'll do it again. There also won't be as much rampid speculation as to whether or not you're about to release new models.

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Or maybe they need to just do like Sony and retire their models every three months or come out with new models yearly like car manufacturers?

quote:

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Speaking of which, it's a similar situation with new models of products. I work at the Apple Store part time, and you'd be amazed at how many people expect Apple to release a flat panel iMac with an even bigger screen in the next few months.

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I wouldn't be surprised to see one by Christmas time.

quote:

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I keep telling them they're out of their minds, but they don't want to listen. Why would a company want to take preorders for over 150,000 new computers, and then release an even better version a few weeks later?

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Because they want to sell even more of them?

quote:

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One, the current product is selling, so there's no need to give anyone incentive to buy.

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Huh? Apple claims to want to target people who don't own Macs. To do that you _need_ to give the people that aren't buying your current line an incentive to buy.

quote:

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Two, all the people who have bought want to feel like they have the best and brightest at least for a few months.

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Then why should they wait more than a few months to come out with something better? But seriously, do you think anyone is getting an iMac to be the 'best and brightest'? Wouldn't they get a G4 if that were the case?

quote:

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[...] I think it's time we started requiring Business 101 in most high school curriculums. It would be a lot easier for companies to make money and therefore keep making great products if they didn't have to fight consumer ignorance on a regular basis.

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You're not talking about Business 101 issues, though. You're talking more about psychological issues (at best marketing).

quote:

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And no, by the way, this isn't the friendliest of forums in which to participate. But it's certainly not the worst, either. I can see why some people would be discouraged from posting here, for fear of criticism. But that's the nature of forums, isn't it?

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Umm...that's life, isn't it? If you're going to live your life in fear of criticism and never participate in a group, then why is that someone else's fault?

quote:

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The people who are willing to hoist their opinions strongly, ( i.e. the ones who fake the most confidence), soon take over the show, while others who may have valid points but are afraid to be forceful get shut out. There's nothing you can really do about that. It's social darwinism. It's how the world is run.

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Yeah, so either speak your piece or suck up and deal. It has nothing to do with fake confidence. It has to do with belief in what you have to say. If it's a valid point, then say it. I would believe more that fear of having an invalid point preventing someone from posting may be more their better judgement stopping them from speaking an invalid one.

quote:

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I'm not saying that anyone here is really nasty, or anything.

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dick-richardson is. He's a baaaaadd boy.

quote:

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I don't think anyone here is. But there's definitely a "you're wrong, and I'm going to tell you why" kind of aggression that the average person would be turned off by.

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How is that aggression? If I believe that you're wrong, then I'm going to tell you why. You may agree. You may disagree. You get your chance to either clarify why you were really right, or clarify why my refutation is wrong. It's called an exchange of ideas. If someone can't handle that, then maybe they should find another forum where the mods never let anyone disagree.

quote:

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The bottom line is that most people aren't strong enough to stand by their own opinions, so they get put down easily.

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Then maybe they need to reinforce their nerve and their argument?

quote:

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And some people (not all, but some) take advantage of that ease by jumping at every opportunity to prove someone wrong.

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What's wrong with that if they're wrong?

quote:

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Even when they don't mean to.

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If they don't mean to, then how would they be doing it too aggressively? Aggressiveness would imply actual intent to me.

quote:

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I say to xeyeder that you should keep posting anyway.

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Sure.

quote:

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No one here is an expert on anything.

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How would you know?

quote:

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Otherwise we'd have better things to do with our time.

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What could be a 'better' use of an 'expert''s time than sharing it with others?

quote:

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Don't let anyone push you around. Here, or anywhere else.

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Strongly seconded.

quote:

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Chances are, people aren't intending to be so forceful. They're just passionate about their opinions.

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And some of them will even back them up with real facts.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

quote:

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Originally posted by Toby
then maybe they should find another forum where the mods never let anyone disagree

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Hmmm... can you recommend one, Toby?

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God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by MarkEagle
Hmmm... can you recommend one, Toby?

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Nope, but it sounds like a really boring place. I could tell you one where a mod doesn't like it when you disagree with _him_, though.

Registered: Dec 2000
Location:
Posts: 37

Hey, Toby.

Thanks for proving my point.

And I'm willing, by the way, to bet you my first born son that Apple won't have an iMac with an even bigger screen by Christmas.

You're right. Apple is beginning to target customers outside of its loyal small base. But if you get past the marketing lingo and listen to what Jobs himself has said, you realize that the end goal is not to target ALL of the Windows users, but a small, easily convertible group of them that Apple can keep. The new iMac has already been sold to more than 150,000 people. Many of which were not Apple owners prior to that purchase. I'd say the machine is fine as is. Better to make sure those ex-Windows users are happy with their machine than to lose them by offering others something better.

Apple doesn't believe in simply selling someone a computer. They believe in giving someone a better quality of life, so that they'll buy twenty computers over the span of their lives, and have children who will buy their computers, and grandchildren, and so on.

You ask if I've bought anything from Dell lately. Of course I haven't. They're worse than Handspring when it comes to dropping prices left and right. I understand that they're trying to stay one step ahead of the so-called "PC price war" but they're ultimately shooting themselves in the foot, unless they can afford to lose money long enough for every other company to go belly-up. Even then, though, they're going to have 0% customer loyalty.
You buy a computer and EXPECT the price to go down in two weeks. That's sad, if you ask me. I've never bought a computer that had its price dropped less than eight months after its original introduction. If I had, I wouldn't go back and buy another one from the same company.

Dell's success has nothing to do with good marketing by Dell; it has everything to do with basic human fear of doing something different from what everyone else does. Once Microsoft loses its stranglehold on the computer industry (which is inevitable eventually�every empire rises and falls) companies like Dell are as good as gone, because people only buy there because they're cheap, and everyone else has one. Catering to cheap people is a great way to get a lot of customers short-term, but it's a lousy way to keep any of them for long.

And the group-think mentality that Dell is banking on is sort of like pop music. When was the last time you heard a Thompson Twins song on the radio? Or Hootie and the Blowfish? How about Motely Crue? These bands sold millions of records, but now most people would be embarrassed to be caught with their CDs. They were extraordinarily successful for a year or two, but the following year they were all flipping burgers at the local Jack in the Box.

If you want to find out how good a band really is, check them out when they're making their 14th album. If enough people are still listening to you after that long, then you must have captured your audience on an emotional level that few bands can. Then you've earned the title of "Artist" instead of "one hit wonder."

Now look at companies like Apple. Thirty years later, and still chugging along nicely. Sure, they only have 5% of the market, but that 5% isn't going anywhere. Ever. They will eat, breathe, and sleep Mac until the day they die. And they will breed the next generation of loyal followers. Why? Because Apple knows how to keep customers (mid-nineties notwithstanding). They make the best products in their class, and they don't pull stupid price reduction tricks, as other computer makers do.

They also don't cater to cheap people. I think that's the thing that upsets PC people the most about Apple. They can't understand brand loyalty. They blow it off, calling Apple fans Mac Zealots! or making insinuations about Religion. But there's no hocus pocus going on there. It's a simple matter of capturing that minority of people in the world who are willing to pay a little extra to get something better. And then making sure you always give them something better.

I guess it depends on your definition of success. Personally, I'd rather be a multi-billion dollar, relatively successful corporation for fifty years or more than the number one corporation for a few years, then have to close my doors in bankruptcy when my cheap customer base runs to the next best thing. Either way, I'd end up a billionaire for life, but I'd feel much better knowing that my company did right by its people, and stayed alive as a result. I'd want a legacy to pass on to my kids. I'd want to have some kind of pride in what I had done.

You're right about one thing. We are talking Psychology here. And even more so Sociology. But as far as I'm concerned, that's the cornerstone of good business. He or she that understands the human animal that is your customer base, and understands how that animal will react to your every move and the moves of all the other animals around him will be the most successful company in the long haul. I think Handspring is losing sight of this. And that worries me, because at one time, I felt a great deal of loyalty to them.

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mrjoec
www.mrjoec.com