Posted by Nomad on 01/25/07 23:47

<asjbiotek@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1169766745.601233.159150@v45g2000cwv.googlegroups.com
> On Jan 25, 5:44 pm, "Nomad" <user@#notme.com> wrote:
>> <asjbio...@gmail.com> wrote in
>> messagenews:1169762209.134248.143430@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com
>>
>> True, Toshiba is losing money on each player but so is Sony.
>
> Except we again come to the point that
>
> (1) Sony is NOT the only blu-ray player, so is Samsung, Panasonic,
> Philips, etc, all of whom are much bigger and richer than toshiba. I'd
> bet on samsung versus Toshiba any day of the week.
>
> (2) As time passes and because of economies of scale in manufacturing,
> the price of blu-ray players will may actually get below $300
>
> And, yeah, you can ALWAYS wait and see and get a good low price
> later....in fact, i do that quite a lot...
>
> >
> in the end, you'll be buying a Blu-ray player anyways ;-)


Toshiba is a $56 billion a year company which has been a global powerhouse
going back as far as the 1960s. Philips, is a pretty strong company but it
only does $38 billion a year by comparison:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2006/snapshots/1441.html

Panasonic is a brand name owned by Matsushita Electric and while Matsushita
is considerably larger than Toshiba, Panasonic as a brand is nowhere near as
large as Toshiba and only went global in 2003. To clarify, Matsushita owns
a number of brands and has total world wide sales of those combined brands
of $78 billion of which Panasonic is one contributing brand:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2006/snapshots/1441.html

Samsung is huge. Samsung does slightly more business globally than
Matsushita but it should be remembered, Blu-Ray is the very smallest part of
their gross sales as is the case for HD-DVD for Toshiba:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2006/snapshots/1441.html

Toshiba doesn't stand alone in this either, with the backing of Microsoft,
Universal-NBC owned by GE which dwarfs all the companies you've named and
Viacom and Time Warner, both of whom have elected to support both formats,
it's a much more equal battle than you are portraying it. Toshiba doesn't
have anywhere near the R&D investment in HD-DVD that Sony has and will be a
drain on Sony's finances for a number of years to come. Note-I have a
sizeable interest in Sony but Sony has not been a well run company since its
founder, Akio Morita, passed away.

That said, in the downside risk category, Toshiba doesn't have anywhere near
as much to lose as Sony as they don't have anywhere near the frontloaded
investment and R&D costs.

>but you know what, our lifespan is finite and life is short, and i'd
> rather start enjoying now rather than later ;-)

When I was in my 20s, this might have been my point of view, especially
considering the early age at which my father passed away and this HD player
business might have been fairly important to me but as a very wise man, my
late father used to say, "We grow too soon old and too late wise." I long
ago figured out what to sweat, decided my priorities in life and what's most
important to me. Whether or not I buy such a player now or ever get such a
player does not rate high on that list.:-)
--
Nomad

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