No, not this post you’re reading here. This post, over at Joel on Software, which thousands of techies read. Joel complains about the way Dell’s site forces users to select which segment they belong to (Home, Education, Small Business, etc). Joel wonders why Dell can’t be more like Apple or Lenovo, and simply let customers [...]
Following our earlier post on the impact of pricing pressure on Dell, an alert reader sent in this comparison yesterday: Dell Inspiron E1405:14.1″ screen (1280×800)Core Duo 1.831 GB RAM (can’t get 512)80 GB HDTotal cost: $1540 MacBook:13.3″ screen (1280×800)Core Duo 1.83512 MB RAM80 GB HDbuilt-in WebcamTotal cost: $1100 …So the Apple premium now stands at [...]
Traders punished Dell stock this week after the Texas computer giant announced that a tough pricing environment would impact earnings. Dell does need to restablish its reputation in the consumer and small business markets, where its once sterling reputation for service has been tarnished, eroding brand premium in highly price sensitive markets. In addition, while [...]
Three executives from Samsung pleaded guilty to price fixing in the memory chip market. The execs will serve 7-8 months in jail and pay fines of $250,000 each. (Samsung earlier agreed to a $300M fine.) There’s nothing like a little jail time to impact white collar behavior, even if they won’t exactly be going to [...]
A customer pricing dispute increased auto-part supplier Lear’s 2005 loss by $6M, the company reported today. According the Lear, the customer made a unilateral “pricing adjustment,” withholding payment on parts ordered for a product line that is no longer in production. This dust-up follows the lawsuit filed by DaimlerChrysler against Lear last year, after the [...]
Symphony Technology Group, a holding company in Palo Alto, California, acquired neighbor Metreo, after Metreo put its assets up for sale following a default on a loan. Symphony replaced Metreo CEO Daphne Carmelli, who will remain as a consultant to handle the transition.
Metreo, former darling of the venture capital community, will be liquidated by creditors this week after failing to make debt payments. The MSNBC report illustrates the danger of plotting growth curves for very small companies: The company had reported revenue of $3.7 million for 2003, representing 1,600 percent revenue growth over the previous two years, [...]
Database giant Oracle Corporation announced this week that it is backing off its multicore licensing scheme, and move more towards the industry mainstream. Mulitcore chips essentially pack more than one processor on a chip, causing havoc for pricing models that historically were “per processor.” Most companies are treating the multiprocessor cores as a single processor [...]
For some reason, the pricing field doesn’t have a great reputation for humor. (See this earlier post for one example.) There’s nothing like humor for getting a point across, though. So check out this piece about a funny way to price things in a supermarket. As a pricing person, I’m generally all for exploiting the [...]
Record executives have been pushing to move the iTunes digital music service, which sells songs for $0.99, to a demand-based pricing model, where hit singles would cost more, and rarely bought tunes would cost less (or perhaps they just want to raise prices). Now I’m a big fan of segmented pricing, but when Steve Jobs [...]
