mattstar

I am not sure SONY ever expected or attempted to make MD a huge international hit. MD has never been able to compete against the rest of SONY's walkman range in terms of price, and the lower end is where most product is sold. Surprisingly today i still see more people with cassette and cd walkmans then with digital players. Md is a premium priced product, it cannot be anything else as the components are not used in any other product so they are not produced in huge quantities so price redustions are less likely. HDD players use mostly off the shelf parts that are produced in there billions, this makes cheaper to produce and prices come down the longer they are produced. I think MD is/was/will always be a niche product and i am sure SONY made a packet from licensing the technolgy to every major JAP manufacturer throughout the 90's. Sony's biggest mistake was not releasing flash and HDD based players earlier(if they got in early enuf i am sure the public would have even accepted ATRAC only players), they could have easily outdone APPLE as they already were established in every single electronics store. In OZ APPLE has only just penetrated mainstream elctronics stores in the last year. HDD/FLASH players are in demand, no matter how good we know MD is most consumers want whats hot. As long as MD progresses and continues to fill it's niche it will last for a while yet.

Assistant at DSE let me look at their computer(stock enquiry) as he was looking at the details of a televsion for me, turns out they were making next to no money on that particular TV. I was actually shocked at how they could sell it for so little. Pity i still could not afford it. Actually my local Dick Smith Powerhouse(Penrith) has been a supporter of MD up until recently, they always stocked blanks and several portables always in stock and i have seen no other store that had as many mini hifis with MD. Now they have blanks and not much else....

They are not aligned with any buying group as far as i know so they do not have large buying power. That is y DSE stores dumped em.

I will dive right in with my first post. All info below is but my humble opinion.... I work for a white goods company that shall remain nameless and i have quite an insight into the way retailers work in OZ. Myer/Megamart are a tiny player when it comes to elctronics/whitegoods they sell next to nothing considering the amount of stores they have. The reason they are reluctant to go lower than RRP is that they do not sell enuf to get good prices from the suppliers. Majority of their customers are also not the type who bargain for prices. Hardly Normal are in the middle i believe they are both overpriced and do not sell as much product as the big 4. Harvey Norman i once considered to sell good product but within the last couple of years has stooped to selling a lot of CRAP no name stuff. From what i have heard HN use a lot of strong arm tactics to limit what their competitors can sell. The big players in australia are Betta, Retravision, Bing Lee and Good Guys. Retravision has unbeleivable buying power and has so many stores/partners it is mind boggling, What their relationship is like with Sony i do not know. Good Guys like to purchase in bulk and can tyhen offer that model at much cheaper than any other store, they measure success on sell through more than profit margin. Most Manufacturers offer stores bulk purchase discounts , these products are usually obsolete models, too many made/imported or specially produced "LOW END MODELS". As MD is never gonna be a VOLUME seller the only time any serious discounts would be offered is wen a model is obsolete and by this time nobody will buy it anyway, I think the PACK INS that Sony OZ offer are a great idea to try and offset this fact.