day 72

pearl harbor, circa 2001 4: sharp shooters of wired world

More money will be made on razor blades than on razors. The big bucks will come from add-ons. Continuing his report to the Wired World, Stephen Anderson types from Japan: "Sharp will make money in Japan because they offer peripheral devices such as a business namecard scanner that keeps up to 2200 cards in the Zaurus." "Sharp is not the only company jumping on the internet appliance bandwagon. Competition is causing other Japanese manufacturers to accelerate the pace of innovation and lowering of prices. Price plunges will give these vendors an edge over the Americans once Japan products hit California's shores. "I think that Sharp will have to reduce prices eventually because of competition. Casio, Toshiba, IBM, and others had devices on sale in Akihabara to challenge Sharp, if not in functions, then in connectivity. "NEC Mobile Gear was the main one that caught my eye. The NEC MC-P1 seemed similar to the Sharp Zaurus line M1-10 as a regular backlit LCD-style PDA. The NEC line has connectivity to the NEC 98 model series computers that sell ONLY in Japan, and might be missed because it is not ready for prime time US market. The price on this device was incredible--65,000 yen list price, 54,000 yen discount ($491). "That device is close to the winner because of price, but the salespeople said that a companion model NEC MC-K1 was selling better because it had a keyboard. The idea of the Mobile Gear was that you could dial your Internet Service Provider and send you email or whatever. The keyboard was a bit more expensive--retail list price of 78,000 yen, discounted to 64,000 yen ($582). To my mind, that seems to be the real winner in Akihabara in early July 1996."

pearl harbor, circa 2001 1 2 3 Daily Dose Index