Saleae logic price increases and interesting blog post explanation

[nctnico]

Oh boy. Who thought it was a good idea to run their own P&P in house?
Shaking my head. Even with the low volume turnkey I've hired out I know better than that.
If the best case scenario is just gaining parity with overseas assemblers, you gain nothing. You need to factor in the immense learning curve, wasted time futzing with the machine, etc. A buddy of mine babysits these things for a living. 6 months in and they are just barely getting a handle on things.

In-house PnP capability depends upon a lot of factors. Good for some, terrible idea for others.
e.g. Sparkfun, Adafruit, and 3D robotics are 3 examples of an ideal case for in-house PnP. They spin a lot of different products (hundreds per year), and small-ish runs (100's to 1000's). The logistics of getting a subcontractor to do hundreds of different boards per year is not easy, so makes sense to bring it in house.

I fail to see the logic. A subcontractor is ideally suited for doing many different kinds of boards per year (for different customers as well). That is what they do for a living. The biggest challenge is getting the logistics right so a subcontractor delivers before stock runs out. You'll need some cash to keep inventory. But then again, having a P&P sitting doing nothing or change to a different product every day isn't going to be cheap either. Either way you need cash.

Personally I'd avoid doing inhouse PC board assembly. I'd rather look for a subcontractor who can do the work for the right price & quality level.

[dannyf]

Clones showed up when demand from hobby market soared. This is when they realized commercial customers are less likely to buy clones and introduced new expensive models.

So, if commercial customers are less likely to buy clones, why do they worry and introduce new and more expensive models?

[Rasz]

Clones showed up when demand from hobby market soared. This is when they realized commercial customers are less likely to buy clones and introduced new expensive models.

So, if commercial customers are less likely to buy clones, why do they worry and introduce new and more expensive models?

Because 8 channels at 20mhz was state of the art 30 years ago? and norm 20 years ago, not something commercial customers are interested today.

[dannyf]

So they didn't introduce new analyzers as a response to clones, nor commercial's customers propensity to buy brand name analyzers, but to technology advances.

If so, maybe you want to express that, instead of what you wrote earlier.

[Rasz]

So they didn't introduce new analyzers as a response to clones, nor commercial's customers propensity to buy brand name analyzers, but to technology advances.

If so, maybe you want to express that, instead of what you wrote earlier.

No, because thats not what I meant? Technology to offer same products cheaply was there 10 years ago. USBEE was offering mixed logic/analog AX model 10 years ago. CPLDs/FPGAs were there 10 years ago. Its not like some big technological breakthrough last year enabled Salea'eaea to finally clone higher end USBEE models.

[dannyf]

Not sure what you meant then and what you are trying to say now. I was simply trying to understand what you meant by this:

Clones showed up when demand from hobby market soared. This is when they realized commercial customers are less likely to buy clones and introduced new expensive models.

and how would one reconcile that with what you wrote later, when you tried to explain why they introduced new expensive models:

Because 8 channels at 20mhz was state of the art 30 years ago?

[Rasz]

It seems we both cant understand each other then I dont get whats not clear in what I wrote? Are you trolling? From the top, by then numbers, dumbed down version:

1 salea clones lowest, cheapest, easiest to reproduce USBEE CX hardware (cypress chip, usb socket, eeprom, resonator,  voltage regulator, and few passives on 2 layer pcb, $2 + cypress chip worth $15 at the time)
2 they market heavily towards maker crowd, key points are super nice GUI and price point slightly lower than usbee
3 arduidiots fall in love with salea, company grows on the back of arduino revolution
4 clones arrive, sales growth dries up, CEO caught with his pants down, expected to charge $150 for $20 worth of hardware forever.
5 salea decides to pivot target audience, because _unlike makers_ most commercial customers will not buy chinese clones. At the same time commercial customers demand more than just a nice gui on top of 8 channel 20MHz, hence NEW MODELS with better parameters.

Where do you see logical inconsistency?

[dannyf]

5 salea decides to pivot target audience, because _unlike makers_ most commercial customers will not buy chinese clones.

So because someone will not buy a clone of yours, you have to introduce a new product? Or you are saying that Salae is a Chinese clone so they have to introduce something new to customers who wouldn't buy Chinese clones?

[Rasz]

5 salea decides to pivot target audience, because _unlike makers_ most commercial customers will not buy chinese clones.

So because someone will not buy a clone of yours, you have to introduce a new product? Or you are saying that Salae is a Chinese clone so they have to introduce something new to customers who wouldn't buy Chinese clones?

 
Are you special? Let me go one slower just for you: Lets say you make Barbie dolls for kids, and soon market floods with counterfeits. You realize adult oriented clientele is less likely to buy chinese products (fear of led poisining). Do you try to sell your Barbie dolls in sex shops? or maybe develop realdoll - new product more suitable for this target audience?

[dannyf]

Let me go one slower just for you: Lets say you make Barbie dolls for kids, and soon market floods with counterfeits. You realize adult oriented clientele is less likely to buy chinese products (fear of led poisining). Do you try to sell your Barbie dolls in sex shops? or maybe develop realdoll - new product more suitable for this target audience?

So in order to fight the counterfeits that don't (materially?) impact your customers who are less likely to buy the counterfeits, you introduce a different product?

Does that sound rationale to you?

[skipjackrc4]

Let me go one slower just for you: Lets say you make Barbie dolls for kids, and soon market floods with counterfeits. You realize adult oriented clientele is less likely to buy chinese products (fear of led poisining). Do you try to sell your Barbie dolls in sex shops? or maybe develop realdoll - new product more suitable for this target audience?

So in order to fight the counterfeits that don't (materially?) impact your customers who are less likely to buy the counterfeits, you introduce a different product?

Does that sound rationale to you?

Just ignore him Rasz.  He's just being a troll.  I agree with what you are saying.

[nctnico]

Let me go one slower just for you: Lets say you make Barbie dolls for kids, and soon market floods with counterfeits. You realize adult oriented clientele is less likely to buy chinese products (fear of led poisining). Do you try to sell your Barbie dolls in sex shops? or maybe develop realdoll - new product more suitable for this target audience?

So in order to fight the counterfeits that don't (materially?) impact your customers who are less likely to buy the counterfeits, you introduce a different product?

Does that sound rationale to you?

Introducing new products is the way to stay ahead of the (copy-cat) competition so it makes perfects sense. People usually call that innovation and progress.

[dannyf]

Introducing new products is the way to stay ahead of the (copy-cat) competition

What kind of "competition" is it if your intended customers don't buy from it?

[IanB]

I've got one, for the sole reason, when I came to actually need a LA, Salae had stopped doing their old digital only ones, meaning I'd have to pay a noticeable amount more for their new analog Logic 8, which I couldn't justify for the minimal use it would actually get.
I could really do with a 16 channel LA, however I can't justify the even higher price for their new 16 channel device, so I just make do with my £10 ebay clone and swapping leads around when needed.

It's not the right thing to do, but from where I'm sitting, Saleae shot themself in the foot by dropping their old digital only devices and forcing people to pay more for functionality they most likely don't need.

This is a pattern that also happens in the software world. A company has a product that does a good job for a good price. But they need to grow, so they keep adding new features, and then they charge more and more for the new versions, because "it does more, right?". In the process they leave behind all the original users who don't want or need all the fancy, whizzbang new stuff, they just want the basic function done well for a good price. Those users will now desert, because why should you be forced to pay more for features you don't want?

[cosmicray]

Back in late December, I was close to pulling the trigger on a Saleae LA. Checking multiple vendors, including Saleae, revealed little to no stock. Either they got hit with a serious last minute rush, or they are having issues with their in-house production capabilities. You should never let your customer (with cash in hand) be left sitting with no options (the exception being Apple, with a new secret product only days away).

My other observation about Saleae (which others in this thread have danced around) is that their software looks more polished than most of the cloners. They also appear to be one of the few with native OS X support. The clone vendors could take even more of their business with OS X support.

[IanB]

One possible deduction from the information in this thread is that Saleae produces expensive software and offers inexpensive hardware to support it. They then give the software away for free and charge inflated prices for the hardware. Somehow this business model doesn't work for them... 

[jaxbird]

I just got an interesting email from the Saleae guys.  It said they are increasing prices on their products and had a link to a blog post on their site.

http://blog.saleae.com/need-raise-logics-price/

...

Since they are specifically looking for a private investor, it sounds like they have exhausted their available credit and the bank said no to any more loans.

I really don't think raising prices will be the way out. I believe they should have looked to China for manufacturing and put more effort into locking down their software to protect against the popular clones littered all over eBay.

Sadly they are likely doomed and will end up with a large debt.

[tszaboo]

no, this is a CEO thinking manufacturing is easy, and building in house will somehow magically stop Chinese clones 

Not to mention, anyone who learned 5 minutes of Makroeconomics could tell you that increasing price in this case will decrease your income. I guess a CEO should have 5 minutes of his life to learn the truth of this.
I personally think, that all the design engineers or programmers who think they can do inhouse manufacturing they basically spit in the face of the enginers who have years and years of experience with manufacturing. Sure, you can just set up a pick and place and a reflow, right?
I've seen contract manufacturers gone bankrupt when they were running production lines 16 hours a day.

[amyk]

Doesn't look quite as refined as the Saleae software. But, the software is what you're really buying when you spend  ~$200 on a Saleae.

Which device are you looking at? The one in the comment you replied to is definitely a Logic clone... The software is the same, and the SDK even includes references to Saleae. Download it and have a look for yourself: http://www.kingst.org/download?fl=JkiAnalyzerSDK.zip

I'm guessing they cloned the SDK so they could use Saleae protocol analysers, and the UI for consistency reasons, but the hardware is completely different.

LA5016:
500Msps @ 16 channels
Altera Cyclone FPGA + MaxII CPLD
Cypress FX2LP interface
32M internal memory

Saleae LogicPro16:
100Msps @ 16 channels
Xilinx Spartan FPGA
Cypress FX3 interface
no internal memory

[Rasz]

My other observation about Saleae (which others in this thread have danced around) is that their software looks more polished than most of the cloners. They also appear to be one of the few with native OS X support. The clone vendors could take even more of their business with OS X support.

most of the ripoff clones use 100% original unmodified Saleae software. Cloners provide 100% copy of the hardware (its just about 20 elements + 2 layer pcb, $15 max), this hardware when plugged in acts 100% as original salea logic and works 100% with salea software downloaded from salea website. This is what hurt salea the most.

[jaxbird]

most of the ripoff clones use 100% original unmodified Saleae software. Cloners provide 100% copy of the hardware (its just about 20 elements + 2 layer pcb, $15 max), this hardware when plugged in acts 100% as original salea logic and works 100% with salea software downloaded from salea website. This is what hurt salea the most.

That is outrageous, but keeping things in perspective, maybe the Saleae design was not that original, as in Saleae actually copied it to begin with.

[coppice]

no, this is a CEO thinking manufacturing is easy, and building in house will somehow magically stop Chinese clones 

Not to mention, anyone who learned 5 minutes of Makroeconomics could tell you that increasing price in this case will decrease your income.

The CEO's letter compounds this by have a real whiny "We're doomed, I tell you. Doomed." quality that would stop most people from dealing with them.

[Rasz]

most of the ripoff clones use 100% original unmodified Saleae software. Cloners provide 100% copy of the hardware (its just about 20 elements + 2 layer pcb, $15 max), this hardware when plugged in acts 100% as original salea logic and works 100% with salea software downloaded from salea website. This is what hurt salea the most.

That is outrageous, but keeping things in perspective, maybe the Saleae design was not that original, as in Saleae actually copied it to begin with.

First diy clones focused on USBEE SX.
http://kazus.ru/forums/showthread.php?t=13724
whats funnier founder of Saladea used to run a blog (Joe’s blog) where he documented bringing it to the market(manufacturing perils, etc), he didnt even hide the fact it was a copy^^^^was "inspired" by usbee.

[Howardlong]

So, for the uninitiated reading this, it sounds like the USP is a milled Al enclosure, and host software, and the BOM cost is about $10, give or take.

It also sounds like, judging from the request for cash, that either the milled Al enclosure is finished with polishing using with the foreskins of unicorns, or somebody's pissed an awful lot of money away.

[Rasz]

somebody's pissed an awful lot of money away.

building engineering team in CA to design actual hardware (instead of just copying USBEE) aint cheap, probably >100K per engineer in current everyone and his dog in a startup climate