Ah, good.

Someone else has started a post about the future of the Rio Car, saving me the trouble of doing so. So I read through the entire history of the thread just to see who had said what and whether my ideas have already been said. And it seems they haven't.

In reply to:

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So how did everyone here first hear about the empeg?

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Oh, looking at Hugo's mp3mobile project, and then all of a sudden it had this link to a new company called empeg that would make you a player if you registered your name in a queue. I was, from memory, somewhere around 293, and now own Mark 1 player 61. I've sort of given up reading the BBS; not being able to keep up with the volume of traffic, overall being quite happy with the features I've got, and having a brother who reads more regularly than I do :-) I also produce a DJ-style mix every once in a while.

I've been thinking about the whole business model of the empeg, and I believe there's a way it could have worked. I think it should have been obvious right from the start that the advertising (such that it was - internet searches) would never keep the sales volume high enough to justify continuous production. In this I agree with Tony, and say that part of Sonic|Blue's carelessness was to grossly underestimate how much advertising they needed to do to break into the market and get a reasonable turnover going.

The market is there - we're evidence of it. Pioneer and Sony producing high-end, 'high-quality' car head units that cost more and offer less is evidence of it. The many stories from Hugo, Rob and others at !empeg of customised installs and special requests is evidence that there are people willing to pay whatever necessary to get exactly what they want.

The other mistake, and I think this is a mistake that has a long history, is to assume that the empeg / Rio Car would be a consumer item. That's like saying a Volvo S40, or BMW M3, is a consumer item. Sure, they're not the ultimate (I was going to say 'Rolls Royce' :-)) of the car world, but the people that buy them are people that have decided that what they want is that car. On the other hand, they are not people who just throw money at the problem and make it go away; they want bang for buck, they've read the spec sheets, and they have decided. (For my part, I'd go a Nissan 200SX, but that's because they're faster and sportier and, perhaps, a bit rarer too).

Now, when a person orders an M3, they don't usually expect to just go down to the showroom and find one with exactly the features they want sitting there. This is the other difference between a specialist item and a consumer one; availability. And I think that it's possible to sell the empeg in this kind of model: tell the customer "put your name down on the list, and when we've got enough orders to make it commercially viable to do a run, you get your player." The easy thing about this is that the only thing that changes in the hardware is the hard drive size - a consumer component that is fitted specially anyway.

The advertising problem - getting continued market - is never going to go away in whatever business model you propose. And certainly the indications I see on the BBS say that there was simply too little interest generated in the right media to keep sales running. And I'd be willing to bet that any other problems people propose with this model are also shared, or worse, with the models already tried.

And it seems that my main question ("What's Sonic|Blue planning for a new car player?") will continue to remain unanswered for a while yet :-)

Have fun,

Paul