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Samuel D Crow
USA
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Posts 1295
15 Dec 2010 20:31
| @Marcel Verdaasdonk When I said that the rest of the parts didn't matter, I meant that they wouldn't change from one system to the next. I didn't literally mean that they don't matter. Of course we don't want to rip off our customers over a few cents per component like Commodore used to do.
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JeeBee McJibble
United Kingdom
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Posts 85
15 Dec 2010 20:48
| Damn right. We want this Amiga to last years and years - we don't know when the next one will come along! :-)
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Ralph Ewers
Germany
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Posts 42
16 Dec 2010 00:56
| Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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Ralph Ewers wrote:
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The latter may work with small batch sizes (say 100-200 - remember the Phoenix re-production on a1k.org some years ago)
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The problem is, as smaller the batch, as more expensive it will become. Producing 5 x 100 units will make the system noticeable more expensive than producing 500 in one go.
This means if we produce the system in 100 batches than the people will have to pay more for the baords.
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As a trained commercial i'm perfectly familiar with economies of scale :) My example was about coordinating individual orders for a total of maybe 100-200 units (as had been done with the Phoenix board), i was not in any way advocating 5 individual production runs (that would be economically insane).
Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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The problem is to know if 500 can be sold at all.
Producing 500 units and only able to sell 300 would ruin us.
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That's exactly the problem i do see (hence my posting). And that's exactly why i think that this problem can't be really solved with a virtual leisure-time group. What you ultimately _will_ need (at least in my humble opinion) is either a sponsor (e.g. you could try to sell the board to someone familiar with production) or you would have to consider founding a startup and finding some venture capital.
You could try to approach partners like e.g. E3B or individual computers who are already active in those fields, but none of them ever did such a huge project (as neither could fund it in the first place).
So i think it's a question of whether you'd dare to eventually found a small startup company...
Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
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Therefore a reservation system where people have deposit a small amount to reserve a board makes sense as it helps to find the ideal production run size. Which is in the interest of the users as this means lower price for them too.
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As i said - that went awfully wrong with phase5 back in the days and revealed the inherent legal problems. You would have to make legally binding contracts with each one interested, you would have to guarantee for the reservation fee (e.g. put it on a bank account and collect interest or even have a lawyer guaranteeing for it on a special "locked account") and define what happens if something is going wrong during production: Would people get back their money and if so, how would you finance that if the money has already been paid - even partially - to the production company?. How would you deal with people who reserve and later refrain from buying?
If the number of such people would overcome a certain critical mass you would have to finance the delta yourself to keep the quantity scale for keeping the low prices - otherwise more people might refrain from buying and you may have to pay back their reservation fee (or get sued for delivering for the lower price you promised before).
No, i really think you're slowly outgrowing the status of a hobby project. You could make a poll to get an idea of how many people might be interested here on the forums (and maybe extend that to other Amiga-related sites). If you stay below - say - 200, then you may approach that as hobby project and coordinate individual orders (Careful! More legal pitfalls possible!) or partner with abovementioned producers... OR you decide to found a company and try to collect venture capital (which would require a clear and appealing business plan beyond "we want to cater the two dozen Amiga die-hards who want new hardware" - maybe you could define an interesting market you would like to act in, like e.g. SCALAish applications or whatever else a Natami could do better than any other platform out there - that would probably require some brainstorming, so i can only give examples here). This approach is probably mandatory if you should exceed about 200 interested persons significantly (though it _might_ also open you the doors for company buyers, who would probably have to be convinced by some impressive demo software running on the machine, but may then perhaps order hundreds or more boards at once - hint: cloud computing might open a new chance here as "standard" software is moved increasingly to central servers, so it does not matter anymore which client the user is actually using - and especially cloud gaming may be a good chance, where games run on specialized servers in the cloud and the client does "only" have to display the video stream it gets from the internet and give back user interaction -> see e.g. EXTERNAL LINK Maybe the Natami could weigh in the good name Amiga had in games or even offer special support functions only possible due to the special Amiga/Natami design! So by partnering with them and offering a dedicated platform they could provide to customers to support their service... Natami could eventually even earn money and finance itself).
Missing the preview here (and am too lazy to re-read it a third time late at night ;), but i hope the text is understandable and consistent - sorry for the long post!
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Ralph Ewers
Germany
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Posts 42
16 Dec 2010 01:14
| Samuel D Crow wrote:
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Of course we don't want to rip off our customers over a few cents per component like Commodore used to do.
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If you're already thinking in terms of customers that means that you have (at least subconsciously) already accepted that you're about to outgrow the "hobby project" status... :-DOT: As a business you sometimes HAVE TO take decisions for cents per component, otherwise you won't survive very long. I don't think Commodore ultimately did only want to rip off customers big time, but instead they had understood that price (and thus cost) is key - the magic is to find the right balance between technologically "ideal" solutions every engineer raves about and what the customers actually pay for (Apple btw. is very good in this department ;)
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Loïc Dupuy
France
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Posts 253
16 Dec 2010 10:02
| A naïve suggestion.
Perhaps some asian foundry will be able to take the production risk.
You give them spec and one MX board and the licence to produce X boards (according to the polls).
They will take the risk, but also all the benefits (zero euro for the team).
R&D will be zero to them, and production wise, it will not be a big risk with a reserved list.
Remove all the financial hassle for the natami team, and perhaps it will be the beginning of a new clone trend :-)
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Samuel D Crow
USA
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 1295
16 Dec 2010 15:37
| @Loïc Dupuy That does sound like a naïve suggestion. Do you know what the shipping costs would be? I'd say probably pretty expensive. Not to mention that Chinese factories have ways of making clones of private designs for a cut-rate. Just ask the makers of the Dingoo handheld!
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Louis Dias
USA
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Posts 217
16 Dec 2010 16:04
| Samuel D Crow wrote:
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@Loïc Dupuy
That does sound like a naïve suggestion. Do you know what the shipping costs would be? I'd say probably pretty expensive. Not to mention that Chinese factories have ways of making clones of private designs for a cut-rate. Just ask the makers of the Dingoo handheld!
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This is very true. The trick is to leave some key components off the board that you can solder on yourself. For instance, they may not know that the CF will be used to boot the device so solder on the connector by hand when the boards are delivered...My guess is that the CF will also be used to initialize the FPGA so they'd be cloning "dumb" boards and have no idea what to do with them.
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Megol .
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Posts 690
16 Dec 2010 16:13
| Samuel D Crow wrote:
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@Loïc Dupuy
That does sound like a naïve suggestion. Do you know what the shipping costs would be? I'd say probably pretty expensive. Not to mention that Chinese factories have ways of making clones of private designs for a cut-rate. Just ask the makers of the Dingoo handheld!
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Yeah the Natami market is so enormous that pirated Natamis is a problem!
The problem is probably the reverse: the market is so small that a Chinese manufacturer wouldn't be interested at all.
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
16 Dec 2010 16:49
| Megol . wrote:
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Yeah the Natami market is so enormous that pirated Natamis is a problem!
The problem is probably the reverse: the market is so small that a Chinese manufacturer wouldn't be interested at all.
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Megol AFAICS Thomas made a very good design that also is adaptive to other uses.
So even if it was made in china clean and without config file the board could be reused to fit another goal. :/
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Martin Durik
Slovak Republic
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Posts 29
16 Dec 2010 16:50
| Megol . wrote:
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Samuel D Crow wrote:
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@Loïc Dupuy
That does sound like a naïve suggestion. Do you know what the shipping costs would be? I'd say probably pretty expensive. Not to mention that Chinese factories have ways of making clones of private designs for a cut-rate. Just ask the makers of the Dingoo handheld!
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Yeah the Natami market is so enormous that pirated Natamis is a problem!
The problem is probably the reverse: the market is so small that a Chinese manufacturer wouldn't be interested at all.
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I can only agree, chinese manufacturers wont go copy something that sells in small numbers, its not effective, they are looking for profit, not to copy everything, they will rather copy the mobile phones / iphones / ipods / ipads etc, which sales are in many thousands.
Look at the minimig - there is no copy of minimig :-) Natami will be the same, I am for sure.
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Niclas Aronsson
Sweden
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Posts 57
19 Aug 2011 20:45
| *bump*
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Reperatorium Kwaku85
Poland
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Posts 40
20 Aug 2011 09:23
| You're right, but what if NatAmi will be sold in milions :)
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Amiga Ppc
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Posts 246
21 Aug 2011 08:06
| Isn't Natami an Open design from the start? So if anyone wants to copy it, I do not see a problem. Closed designs almost lead Apple to doom...
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3991
21 Aug 2011 09:13
| amiga ppc wrote:
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Isn't Natami an Open design from the start?
So if anyone wants to copy it, I do not see a problem.
Closed designs almost lead Apple to doom...
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so far it's closed from BOM to source.
If they hadn't i would have at least took a look at the Layers of the PCB to look for a way to reduce cost.IMHO at this point it's actually good to keep it closed still.
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Wojtek P
Poland
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Posts 1597
22 Aug 2011 22:58
| Marcel Verdaasdonk wrote:
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amiga ppc wrote:
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Isn't Natami an Open design from the start?
So if anyone wants to copy it, I do not see a problem.
Closed designs almost lead Apple to doom...
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so far it's closed from BOM to source.
If they hadn't i would have at least took a look at the Layers of the PCB to look for a way to reduce cost.
IMHO at this point it's actually good to keep it closed still.
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Yes indeed. At least it is clearly known WHO is responsible for it.
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