The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘model’

Sony’s first attempts at a netbook were disastrously bad, but Sony has seemingly gotten its act together. The Sony VAIO M N450 is a true netbook

Read more:
The Sony VAIO M N450 proves Sony finally understands netbooks

Let me catch you up. We received a tip back on Monday indicating that the Adamo XPS had disappeared from Dell.com. This of course caught our attention as the super-thin Dell was just announced back in late October and only available for purchase since December.

Here is the original post: 
The Dell Adamo XPS really is discontinued even though it’s still available for purchase

Samsung will soon have a bit of competition in Best Buy’s 3D TV department. A $2,899 Panasonic VT20 plasma, Blu-ray player and 3D glasses bundle will go on sale tomorrow expect not all Best Buy stores. It’s a Magnolia exclusive

Original post: 
Best Buy Magnolia stores to sell Panasonic 3D bundle starting tomorrow

Surround sound bars are generally about the width of a 42-inch flat panel, which is perfect if you have a large TV.

Read more: 
The Asus Cine5 speaker brings surround sound to your bedroom, desk

The TiVo Premiere will be here real soon so it isn’t much of a surprise to see a Series 3 on Woot . You might want to consider it, too.

View post:
That TiVo Series 3 on Woot isn’t a bad deal

Yesterday, I wrote that location was going to be this year’s Twitter at SXSW. Today, my inbox exploded.

It seems that just about every company, advertiser, and even plenty of users associated with the location space emailed me with pitches, ideas, thoughts, etc. To say that space is red-hot right now, is putting it mildly. One of the companies that reached out to me was Brightkite, one of the earliest hot location players.

CMO and co-founder Rob Lawson admits that the network has been “pretty quiet for a while,” but hints at some exciting stuff coming up for March (yes, around the time of SXSW). But he also wanted to share some things they’re working on right now, and a few interesting bits of data.

Notably, Brightkite has over 2 million active users currently around the world. While that might seem small compared to the bigger social networks like Facebook and Twitter, that’s actually four times the size of the newer rival Foursquare, that is getting much of the hype these days. Another interesting tidbit: Brightkite has had localized promotions in place for some time now, and they’re seeing strong usage.

What users of Foursquare may know as check-in or mayor special, Brightkite calls Local Promotions. And they have a page on the site where local businesses can sign up for free. On that page, they note:

We would love to help your bar, cafe, coffee shop, or business reach out to the local community through local promotions. We’ll let nearby Brightkite folk know your business gives them preferential treatment, and that they should stop in for a visit. Fill out the form below to get started.

Brightkite says these promotions are seeing a lot of interest from all types of brands. And usage is strong with over 100 brands including big ones like Gap, Ben & Jerry’s and Time Warner Cable, seeing over two percent response rates when these notifications are inserted into users stream. And the best ones are seeing five to ten percent. When compared to more traditional ads, those numbers are very solid.

Like Foursquare check-in and mayor specials, the Brightkite deals offer things like free (or heavily discounted) drinks and meals, but also extend to things like discounted hotel rooms, car rentals, and even dry cleaning.

So is Brightkite making any money off of these? Yes. While many of the smaller local businesses use the service for free or close to free (to both prove the model and drive growth), Lawson notes that some of the big national brands are spending some big time money to advertise locally. These campaigns range from $10,000 to $200,000, Lawson says.

Something else that interests me about Brightkite is their unique approach to social relationships. When it started, Brightkite had a symmetrical model, much like Facebook and Foursquare, which requires users to accept each other as friends. But late last year, the company switched the model to be an asymmetrical one, like Twitter, where one party can follow another without permission.

This may seem like a horrible idea for a location-based service given the privacy implications, but Brightkite’s is a bit different of an asymmetrical model. “Our model is asymmetrical (like Twitter), but reversed. With Twitter, you decide who to follow but anyone can see your content.  With Brightkite, you decide who to share your content with, but you can only see others if they decide to share with you,” Lawson notes. He continues, “We are convinced this is the right model for location based services – people want to be in control of who knows where they are. We turned away from the handshake model (Facebook, Foursquare) because we found users didn’t like the social pressure of having to accept a friend request. Just because you are happy to share your location with me, doesn’t mean I want to share mine with you, even though we want to maintain a relationship.“

As someone who has dealt with this many times before, I see his point. Lawson says that generally Brightkite users have been receptive to the changes, but says that some older users liked some of the more advanced features of the old model better — and Brightkite is working to get some best-of-both-worlds options for them.

Brightkite merged with another location-based network, Limbo, last year and raised some new funding. They face a battle in warding off the fast-charging hot location networks like Foursquare and Gowalla (not to mention Yelp and the new Google Buzz), but all of them appear to be benefiting from brand interest in the local advertising space.

Hmmm, unannounced digital cameras. Got to love the Internet. Anyway, LetsGoDigital dug up details about four tasty FujiFilm FinePix cameras

See the original post here:
A gaggle of FujiFilm FinePix cameras leak

Wait in line, buddy.

Read the original post:
Stephen Colbert wants the Apple iTablet

Please! Friend! Enjoy a new Hourtime episode before the madness that is the tablet launch.

View post:
New Hourtime episode

How much exactly is the Nexus One line of Android phones worth to Google? The folks at Trefis have modeled Nexus One sales into their financial forecast for Google and estimate that it will account for nearly $20 billion of Google’s market cap (based on its target price pf $659 per share), accounting for 9.3 percent of the total. That is more than its estimated contribution of ad and search partnerships (5.1 percent), Google Apps (3.2 percent) or YouTube (2.4 percent). Only search ads account for more of Google’s total value (68.1 percent).

How does Trefis come up with these numbers? Trefis is an investing site which comes up with financial models for stocks which translate into interactive stock charts and price targets. If you don’t agree with their model, you can change some of the underlying assumption sin the drag-able charts and create your own model (see below). Trefis is assuming Google will sell 5 million Nexus One phones this year, and that the Nexus One market share will grow from 0.4 percent this year to 3.4 percent in 2016, when the iPhone will have an 11.5 percent global mobile phone market share (as shown by the olive-colored line above) and Blackberry will have an 8.2 percent share (green line).

That seems a bit aggressive, but as I mentioned, you can always change the assumptions to something you think makes more sense. For instance, if the Nexus One even manages to capture 1 percent of global mobile phone market share, it would add 2.44 percent to Google’s market share, or about the same as YouTube. The Trefis model takes into account other factors, such as the unsubsidized price and margins declining over time. Remember, even though HTC is making these phones, Google is the one who is selling them, both directly and through carriers such as T-Mobile (who are subsidizing the $530 unlocked price and offering them to consumers for $180 with a contract). The Trefis model projects Nexus One revenues to be:

2010: $2.8 billion
2011: $5.7 billion
2012: $8.5 billion
2013: $11 billion
2014: $14 billion

While it’s fun to play around with these numbers, nobody can really predict how successful the Nexus One family will be. And it is not safe to assume typical mobile phone margins since Google has other motivations for pushing these phones, namely to increase adoption of the mobile Web where it will make its real money through mobile search. Also, this model does not take into account the software revenues from all the other Android phones out there. It is only Nexus One. Trefis estimats that Googl eis making a $231 gross profit on each phone, based on iSuppli’ s$174 component cost estimate plus other costs such as warranty, R&D ($50), and HTC’s cut ($75). Google has publicly stated that the profits from the Nexus One are minimal. Yet, if two thirds of Apple’s market share can be attributed to the iPhone (as estimated by Trefis), it doesn’t seem like a stretch to think that Nexus One can become 9 percent of Google’s.

In fact, if you look at Google’s stock price on the day before the Nexus One was confirmed, it was $590, and it rose to $627 just before the official launch on January 5, adding nearly $12 billion to Google’s market cap in that time alone. Of course, there were other factors contributing to the stock’s rise during that time, but an extra $20 billion on top of Google’s current $185 billion market cap is not unthinkable. (The stock today is trading at $585, after the disclosure that it might be exiting the China market).

How much do you think Nexus One is worth to Google?

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors