<< Unless a person's mobile storage needs can be satisfied with just one or two flash cards, it will be cheaper in the long run to go with Clik!, even including the initial cost of the drive.
That's so obvious I don't see the need to state it every single time I mention Clik!'s price advantage over CF. >>
Allen. This is a major point of contention between the bulls and bears of this stock. Everything you said above is absolutely true, from the consumers point of view. But your statements don't address the real issue. In fact, it's no more than a good 'spin' designed to suck in the uninformed (or a rationalization for those who own the stock).
Manufacturer's make money by offering a 'skeleton product', with just enough features to make it nominally functional. This product MUST have a low factory cost. It is essential. They also make money by offering 'add-ons', sold separately. The MANUFACTURER bears the burden of the nominal functionality, and the consumer bears the burden of the add-ons. This is important.
I would argue that a nominal functional digital cam, PDA, phone, etc... would include maybe 8-16Mbytes of storage. If you look at the digital cams being sold now, you will see this is true. So, What is cheaper for the manufacturer:
To offer this nominal functionality with a FLASH slot and low density flash card, or with a CLIK! slot and disk?
The answer is obvious. The manufacturer absolutely cannot afford to bear the cost of the CLIK! drive, when a much cheaper, less power hungry solution is available with the FLASH slot. One cannot argue with the fact that a digital cam with a CLIK! slot built in has a higher factory cost than one with a CF slot, thus the manufacturer is giving away product margins for a feature that helps the customer ONLY if they are in the niche market of requiring a bunch of offline storage, NOT on a PC.
If you think the above logic is false, look at the ZIP model. Why hasn't the ZIP replaced the floppy in PCs? ZIP disks have a much lower cost per Mbyte than floppies, so all PCs should have ZIPS by now, right?
I rest my case...
kp |
