General Forum

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

StUrrock — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:30:23 GMT

Whether you are mass market or top end, it seems fairly simple.

Make products that are desirable, marketed well and priced accordingly to your prospective customers and you will succeed.

Otherwise you are in trouble!

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

vikinger — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:54:10 GMT

The point of the original post was to establish why B&O shares (and hence perception of the business) were plummeting whilst Apple shares were dramatically rising. The point of mentioning Apple was that they can charge at least double their opposition in the PC/ mobile/ MP3 fields and customers are happy to pay in their droves. What do B&O need to do to copy the success of Apple? (Quality/ design/reliability etc etc.) Nothing to do with directly comparing Apple & B&O products, but a question about how one company manages to be very successful whilst the other struggles (in comparison with its historical business.)

Linder suggests a comparison with Loewe: there's nothing to be learned from that comparison other than the fact that both B&O and Loewe are struggling with their products in the present financial climate. Is the model of charging, say, 10 times their mainstream competitors prices, a sensible model for survival?

Not too many ideas for a future product to bring success are appearing in this thread. Elephant's thoughts on lower prices/ higher sales ........ presumably B&O do play around with prices and predicted sales models before setting prices. The very high price and exclusivity market that B&O have gone for in the past ten years doesn't seem to be working as well as the high (but not too high) prices charged earlier in the company's history.

Graham

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

Calvin — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:15:42 GMT

Some people are trying to suggest B&O and Apple are the same, they're not.

Apple are a Computer company that sell few computers as a % (I own one btw) but have a massive share of the personal music player market and a largish share of the mobile telephone market.

B&O are a hifi and tv company that don't make computers, have an almost zero % of the personal music market and have sold some expensive phones which are either brilliant or rubbish depending on your viewpoint

The only thing in common is the aesthetic design philosophy. That is it. Seriously, stop with the Apple stuff and lets maybe pick relavent companies to compare with.

I love my Mac Mini but one of the factors that would put me off buying a Mac again is the sort of people you bump into that go on and on about how 'great' it is as if it's the only thing they have to talk about. I suspect that some people are picking Apple vs B&O because they have a designer look and want to talk about Apple stuff. If that's the case then I'm going to decide that I like talking about Star Wars and divert every thread on BeoWorld into talking about its relationship to the Star Wars franchise. What? That would be really annoying and irrelavent? Read the 4th paragraph

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

Peter — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:25:06 GMT

On the Apple/B&O comparison - I think this is valid and I think shows why Apple are successful. I have a number of Apple products ranging from a G4 Powerbook to a MacBook Air and a variety of iPods and other computers. All have been a complete delight to use, have been reliable and on the off occasion when help has been required, the Apple Care line or the support pages in the Community section of the official web site has allowed the problem to be solved almost instantly.

When I first bought B&O, I would say that the same applied to B&O. The products performed brilliantly and any infrequent problem was dealt with superbly by a very dedicated dealer with whom I developed such a good relationship with that I would never consider buying from anyone else.

Sadly they gave up the franchise and since then both products and service are just not the same. The BV10 looks wonderful but the sound was simply not good enough for such an expensive set and the remote menus just not as user friendly as older B&O sets. The Beo5 is very clever but again has lost the user friendly interface that characterises B&O. The products are still good and in some ways as good as you can get but there is always a proviso. They should be like Apple and just work - instead there is always something that they don't have or a drawback.

In my view, the B&O website needs to mirror that of apple. Yes have a flash front of shop, but also have the support both of FAQs but also a community support forum with the odd technician checking that all is correct. Having Beoworld doing this is ridiculous - you have to go looking for this site - many users will be unlikely to do more than ring a dealer who now the service departments are centralised, will have little idea.

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

vikinger — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 07:37:32 GMT

linder:

Wouldn't Loewe be better for this type of comparison instead of Apple.

http://www.loewe-uk.com/uk/loewe-ag/investor-relations/loewe-share/current-loewe-share-price.html

Well, Loewe seem to have dropped from about 38 euro to 6 euro, so not quite the dramatic fall of B&O but very similar.

The comparison with Apple was not intended to start an Apple vs B&O product comparison, but to just point out that Apple share price is climbing and yet they sell products to willing customers at about double the price of similar products by others. The success of one lower priced product (you can argue about whether it was the iPod or iPhone) seems to have spun off into increased sales over the whole product range.

B&O could do with following this model: one quality item selling for up to double the competition, but within the purchasing range of a large number of customers. Such an item would eventually lead to increased sales across the whole range.

Personally I think that a B&O module combining DAB and N radio (like a Pinnacle or Roku unit + DAB) that could be plugged into any B&O vintage or current product, including auto mains power-on or off (for the power lead of the main unit) would do it.......... and it could be used for other makes of tuner/ amplifier. This would also cover the possible demise of FM and keep many tuners in long-term use. Simple low-cost electronics with reliable components in a very high quality case.

Graham

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

soundproof — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:52:38 GMT

Do some more thinking, then. The leading mobile phone manufacturers produce factors more phones, and a lot more mp3 players are sold. The stand-out design makes Apple noticeable - to the point that people are using other earbuds, to avoid being seen as an Applenic.

As mass marketing goes, one could say that B&O sells factors more BL5s every year than any other high-end loudspeaker manufacturer sells units in similar or higher price ranges - that comes as a surprise to many.

I don't wish to start an Apple/B&O discussion. It's a sad fact that B&O was so locked into its analog and unique control system for the home that it waited too long to consider making the jump into digital, and that has caused trouble. But it's also a sad fact that the world economy is not doing too well these days, and that makes selling these articles tough, unless you offer the market something that presents a mix of function and form that appeals.

As Apple last quarter had its best result ever, in a market struck by financial woes, this speaks to an ability to do just that. And reminds one of the success B&O enjoyed from the mid-60s until the mid 80s.

I'm hoping for some outstanding products from B&O, and wish that they years ago had built on what they had with acoustic lenses when they first launched them. That entire concept should be relaunched, integrated to playback from computers, with outstanding acoustic room-integration - after all the hold-outs in Struer who can't let go of the past are taken out to pasture.

That would bring people into the stores.

Apple - iPhone sales, up 100% in Q1: The Company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Unfortunately, they are selling millions of phones, that's true.

Now for some real mass marketing - Q1 - Nokia:

Nokia total mobile device volumes of 107.8 million units, up 16% year-on-year and down 15% sequentially.

Nokia converged mobile device (smartphone and mobile computer) volumes of 21.5 million units, up 57% year-on-year and up 3% sequentially.

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

BenSA — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:24:55 GMT

soundproof:

BenSA:

Apple is a mass market product anyway....hate it when its compared to B&O.

Out of curiosity, how do you define that? As Apple traditionally has had around 3-5% market share of computers, does that make it mass market?

There are computers in the same categories that cost 1/5 of an Apple; just as there are car brands that cost 5x+ what you pay for a decent new car.

Are the 5x+ cars pandering to a "mass market?"

How does a computer brand with 1/100 the on-market software available for PCs qualify as mass market? (Disregarding that you can run PC-software on a Mac, something just a small proportion of Mac users do.)

I just have to think of Ipods and Iphones........

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

soundproof — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:02:50 GMT

BenSA:

Apple is a mass market product anyway....hate it when its compared to B&O.

Out of curiosity, how do you define that? As Apple traditionally has had around 3-5% market share of computers, does that make it mass market?

There are computers in the same categories that cost 1/5 of an Apple; just as there are car brands that cost 5x+ what you pay for a decent new car.

Are the 5x+ cars pandering to a "mass market?"

How does a computer brand with 1/100 the on-market software available for PCs qualify as mass market? (Disregarding that you can run PC-software on a Mac, something just a small proportion of Mac users do.)

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

seethroughyou — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:37:45 GMT

Quality...what quality?

My beosound 5 got dust under its screen within a few months. B&O haven't done a thing about it except to say i need to get it serviced. Got it cleaned and serviced now dust again.

Threatened a refund so not dealer approached B&O denmark for an exchange but they're painfully slow to reply...

Disappointed, disillusioned after thousands of ££££ on this.

No more B&O from now on.

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

linder — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:44:28 GMT

Wouldn't Loewe be better for this type of comparison instead of Apple.

http://www.loewe-uk.com/uk/loewe-ag/investor-relations/loewe-share/current-loewe-share-price.html

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

Karel Uyttendaele — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:49:16 GMT

elephant:

Karel Uyttendaele:
In my very humble opinion.. Comparing B&O shares against Apple is of no relevance at all! The core audience of the 2 companies are just completely different. BeoWorlders might state otherwise...

I was not comparing share price - perhaps you meant market share ?

If you're not comparing shares.. why show them in the first place?

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

BenSA — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:32:05 GMT

Apple is a mass market product anyway....hate it when its compared to B&O.

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

elephant — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:52:41 GMT

Karel Uyttendaele:
In my very humble opinion.. Comparing B&O shares against Apple is of no relevance at all! The core audience of the 2 companies are just completely different. BeoWorlders might state otherwise...

I was not comparing share price - perhaps you meant market share ?

What I was trying to say was that a large R&D overhead divided by a aggressive sales forecast equals lower margins and a more affordable price

Put it another way, is B&O sales forecasting too financially conservative for their own good ... a self-fulfilling prophercy

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

vikinger — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:40:12 GMT

Calvin:

The first rule to remember about business analysis: correlation does not equal causation

When I was working as a commodities analyst, it was painful to read the conflicting stuff: "Costs are going up which should support metal prices at $x levels" "Metal prices are rising which will support price increases by raw material producers" and so on

Agree. There's just the usual mix of genuine enquiry and black humour in this thread.

Re: B&O Financial Report: Heading for success or failure????

Calvin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:54:49 GMT

The first rule to remember about business analysis: correlation does not equal causation

When I was working as a commodities analyst, it was painful to read the conflicting stuff: "Costs are going up which should support metal prices at $x levels" "Metal prices are rising which will support price increases by raw material producers" and so on