Tesla Motors, the electric car start-up headquartered in San Carlos, California, has announced it has achieved profitability in the month of July. It took Tesla seven years to turn a profit – a feat many other start-ups never achieve. In the month of July 2009, the company earned $20 million in revenue, which exceeded expenses by about $1 million. Since Tesla is still a private company, it has no formal obligation to disclose details when it comes to publishing financial information. In that regard, the firm was very selective about what information it revealed. With that, let’s take a look at the details behind the numbers. Read more »
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Automotive,
Business,
Numbers,
Start-ups,
Tesla Motors
RadioShack is undergoing a major rebranding that will change the company’s forward-facing name to “The Shack.” The name change may hint at a new direction for the company, venturing into the general home electronics space thus far occupied by general technology retailer Best Buy. How will the move impact RadioShack and will it be a success? Read more »
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Business,
Decisions,
Marketing,
Numbers,
RadioShack,
Ratailing,
Rebranding
News of the iPhone having sold one million units during its opening weekend has been widely distributed all over the web. This is an interesting number for more than one reason. First, selling one million units at $199 and $299 a piece during the current economic climate is remarkable. How so? Let’s compare this number to the sales of the original iPhone in the summer of 2007. The first iPhone sold anywhere between 250,000 and 700,000 units during its opening weekend. Since this range is quite “fat,” let’s settle in the middle and assume that the actual number was 500,000 units. Note that this was at a time when multibillion dollar banks were not failing, the world’s largest automobile manufacturer hasn’t gone under, and the Dow Jones Industrial average was trading at two times the rate as it is today. Read more »
Posted in
Apple,
Numbers,
Palm,
iPhone
Blu-Ray. What comes to mind when you hear “Blu-Ray”? An awesome high-def format or a medium that has outlived its prime? Recent numbers from the NPD group suggest that it’s anything but the latter (even though we’d love to beg to differ here at TNR).
NPD’s retail tracking service found Q1 sales of standalone players up 72 percent over last year. 400,000 units were sold, representing a 14% increase in dollar sales.
Using our analytical skills, we project these numbers to increase even more in the coming months and years, as prices of both the players themselves as well as Blu-Ray disks (the medium) are expected to drop, with increased level of production efficiency as well as being able to take greater advantage of economies of scale.
It looks like I was wrong (again) about Blu-Ray. Boy how much do I not understand the success of a physical format in today’s entertainment environment. I still stare with disbelief at these numbers and ask myself, why would anyone buy into Blu-Ray when almost all programming can be acquired over the web, without leaving one’s home? Without being tied to a particular device/screen? And being able to take the said content with you on the road on your iPod/iPhone or any other mobile device. Looks like old habits die hard and people still like the physical format after all. I, personally, choose to take the red pill (and go all IP). How about you?
Posted in
Blu-ray,
HDTV,
Home Entertainment,
Numbers
The sole purpose of this post is to test the effect of site framing. Specifically, we are testing the DiggBar and how a website’s traffic is affected by it. We will report openly to the web community with the results of this mini-experiment. Please follow the guidelines below. This is the only way our experiment can work and for the results of this test to be accurate (very important):
- If you are logged into Digg, please Digg this story and visit it through the DiggBar. Don’t click through to the original.
- If you are not logged into Digg, click through to the original story without the DiggBar. Then go ahead and log in. Digg the story but don’t click through a second time.
We are basing the baseline (constant) traffic that we should be getting on the amount of times the post gets Dugg. For example: if the post is Dugg 100 times and fellow Diggers follow the above instructions, we should be able to tell how much traffic the DiggBar added/subtracted from overall site traffic. So if we get 90 pageviews, it would means that 10 pageviews were stolen from us by the DiggBar.
Just in case you were referred here through a different site (not Digg), here is the link to Digg this post:
http://digg.com/tech_news/How_much_traffic_does_the_DiggBar_frame_steal_from_your_site
Why all the fuss?
As we discussed on the TNR Podcast over and over again (as well as countless others in the industry) we don’t like sites that frame other sites. So we’re putting our traffic where our mouth is and want to find out what effect frames have on overall site traffic. Frames are the underlying technology behind website bars such as the DiggBar, the Facebook bar, and the Hootsuite bar. We’re starting our experiment with Digg (being the most tech-savvy place on the web in our opinion 
) ).
Since this is an open experiment the results of which will be available freely to everybody, we will post them on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 on the home page of TechNestReport.com. We will be using the above instructions as the baseline of the experiment and will be collecting traffic data using Google Analytics.
Posted in
Cloud Computing,
Digg,
Experiment,
Exteme Geek,
Featured,
Numbers,
Social Networking,
Web design
In Q1 2009, RIM increased its share of the consumer smartphone market by 15% over the prior quarter. In other words, RIM now has a market share of nearly 50 percent when it comes to consumer smartphones. According to NPD group, a “buy-one-get-one” promotion by U.S. CDMA carrier Verizon Wireless helped push the Canadian company’s BlackBerry Curve past the iPhone 3G in the first three months of the year. This comes as bad news for Apple and Palm, since both companies lost 10% each. NPD reported that the BlackBerry Curve was the top-selling smartphone during the quarter, followed by the iPhone 3G, the BlackBerry Storm, the BlackBerry Pearl, and the T-Mobile G1. “Verizon Wireless’s aggressive marketing of the BlackBerry Storm and its buy-one-get-one BlackBerry promotion to its large customer base contributed to RIM capturing three of the top five positions,” NPD analyst Ross Rubin said.
On the surface, it looks like the folks over at Waterloo (RIM HQ) should be celebrating. But what if they don’t have anything to celebrate with? By cutting margins in half – that’s what happens with a buy-one-get-one promotion – RIM is well on its way to becoming the Dell of the smarphone market. Sure, the company’s products took three of the top five smartphone spots in the quarter. But the iPhone was #2 – and it got there without using any “aggressive” promotions or buy-one get-one offers. In other words, the iPhone spoke for itself (no pun intended), while the Curve needed all the help it could get to entice consumers to buy it.
You might say to me, “Alex, numbers are numbers; there are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.” Well, there are in this case. While RIM did sell more devices, the more important question is – at what cost? By discounting giving away the Curve, RIM has basically admitted that it can’t compete with Apple’s iPhone on the basis of value, user experience, or customer delight. Thus, it resorted to price-cutting measures. It’s kind of like deciding on that Porsche Cayman you’ve always wanted, but seeing a Toyota Yaris next to it for free, when purchased with another Yaris. So you buy the Toyota because your sixteen year-old daughter needs her first car, and you just couldn’t pass on the buy-one get-one offer. By allowing Verizon to give one Curve away as another one is bought commoditizes the BlackBerry brand, plain and simple. This is something Apple didn’t have to do. Read more »
Posted in
BlackBerry,
Decisions,
Marketing,
Numbers,
RIM
