Adobe AIR Development

[agaripian]

During in interview with WSJ ( @ minute 14:00) the co-ceo of Rim, Jim Balsine, states there are currently "3,000 air apps which is web". Air apps are definitley not web apps   He might be totally off by the 3,000 number. Yes, there are all the Webworks apps as well that earned Devs free PlayBooks. But shipping only 3,000+ units for free to devs does not seem to be a big deal!! Lets get these PlayBooks shipped already so we can test/modify enhance our apps!!

[jffurlan]

Lol. Like how you turned that around. Mike also stated that they had 3,400 apps ready for launch, so it looks like they came pretty close to their target/predication.

[br14]

I'm surprised they had as many as that for a device that didn't exist.

And 3,000 apps isaround  $1.5 million plus shipping and admin costs. Not pocket change even for RIM.

[macwarrior]

well, remember that $500 is only the retail cost -- there's profit in that, and RIM would also pay less to the manufacturer because of the volumes involved.

I'd bet that they're only actually writing off about 250 dollars for each playbook they give out to a developer, for a total of about $750,000 -- that's about as much as one large advertising campaign (a few TV ads and some printed stuff) costs. Well worth the price to say they have 3000 apps instead of, what, 100? I think when the Xoom came out there were only 40 tablet-specific Android apps available.

[br14]

But RIM is foregoing the profit. And they'd certainly be able to sell those devices for $500 if they were not handing them out for free - though admittedly part of that may be payable to a retailer.

So there is a cost, and their margins will take a pounding this quarter even without giving away a chunk of their initial manufacturing run. You're getting a $500 value. And in terms of lost revenue and admin costs it probably costs RIM rather more than $500.

RIM has over 16,000 employees of which probably a third or more are developers. They'd have been better off getting their employees to write a few apps each. Probably have ended up with more than 3,000 apps. Sadly for their employees I don't believe they're allowed to write apps independently. 

[Ebscer]

And 3,000 applications does not mean 3,000 developers. I doubt that I am the only developer with more then one app.

[TheMarco]

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Ebscer wrote:

And 3,000 applications does not mean 3,000 developers. I doubt that I am the only developer with more then one app.

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Definitely not. In fact I think most of us here have more than one app. i have three myself. Honestly I think there's no more than 1000 free playbooks to send out for RIM.

[macwarrior]

But RIM is foregoing the profit. And they'd certainly be able to sell those devices for $500 if they were not handing them out for free - though admittedly part of that may be payable to a retailer.

So there is a cost, and their margins will take a pounding this quarter even without giving away a chunk of their initial manufacturing run. You're getting a $500 value. And in terms of lost revenue and admin costs it probably costs RIM rather more than $500.

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not to debate economics, but RIM's actual *cost* is only about 250 dollars. If they sold them for 250 dollars they'd break even, no money gained or lost. It's not lost profit or revenue unless because of the giveaway they ran out of devices and had none to sell -- everyone who would have bought one will still buy one, even if they give some other devices away. So the cost to them of giving them away for free is 250 dollars each. We may be getting a 500 dollar value because that's what we'd have had to pay at retail, but RIM is only actually "paying"  250 dollars per tablet.

I really don't think that they're losing that much money on the promotion, and if the alternative was a few dozen apps in the app world then they're absolutely coming out ahead.

[br14]

"RIM's actual *cost* is only about 250 dollars"

The number you're thinking of may be even less than that. But you're still incorrect.

The valuation of that device is what it will sell for to a retailer. That is its value to the company should a warehouse be destroyed and an insurance claim be raised for example. As soon as the device is transformed into a working tablet it acquires it's full value regardless of cost. 

And at the end of the year, if they had sold those 1000? Playbooks, there would be a line on the P&L showing 1000 * the profit margin per device. Their shareholders would have that much more value in the company.

So RIM is giving away rather more than $250 per device. And it's probably costing them $100 per device to ship them out. RIM generally doesn't ship product itself and I understand has hired a third party to ship developer devices.

But if you feel RIM is treating you badly, you should write to them and tell them to forget giving you a free device. Then you can be like me and have to and lay out $500.

[TheDarkIn1978]

$100/device to ship?  that doesn't sound right.  can you explain further?