On undiscontinuing products

[Ernie Malaga]

"Undiscontinuing," of course, is the opposite of "discontinuing." To us, this means reviving calculators that have been put to sleep and have ceased being made.

HP, like any other company in the world, is out there to make profits. In today's cut-throat market, however, brand-new calculators don't return much for their investment, which may be why HP chose to close APO three (?) years ago.

New products require lots of R&D, and the race for bigger and more, more, more is truly self-limiting. Unless you can hook up your HP-49G to an espresso maker (or a toilet, as one participant in this board wished he could), there isn't much you can add to the 49G.

HP, how about undiscontinuing old products? Some of your products of the past were huge successes, and would have potential buyers even today. You wouldn't have to spend a dime on R&D because everything has been done before. At most, you'll have to make slight changes to accomodate newer vesions of old components no longer being made.

Lots of forum members seem to like the HP-34C, the 15C, the 32SII, and the 42S. Just how much trouble would it be to bring them back -- unmodified?

Are you listening, HP?

-Ernie

[john smith]

Ernie,

HP is precisely going to do that. They are bringing back the most popular brand with slight cosmetic change for better reasons by incorporating the improvements what found to be were deficient. They also indicated that they would increase the memory size as well. Heck, if they don't enhance the vintage products who cares?

Look at the pricing level at ebay.

HP 11C......new price was $69.99......ebay price $300.00

HP 15C....................$89.99.................$400.00

HP 41CV...................$239.00................$350.00

HP 41CX............... ...$279.00................$500.00

These are just a few example. My quoted new prices were based on a discount store like "Best Products" what I paid for. Best Products are out of business now.

It is a madness. How much people love these products. They are willing to pay any price.

HP must have noticed that. Since very little to no R&D cost involved to resuurect those madly loved products, why not make money by HP? Prices points would be much lower, as yet their ironclad guarantee will make customers nothing but happy.

Go HP go. Long live HP.

[David Ramsey]

Quote:

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It is a madness. How much people love these products. They are willing to pay any price.

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Guys, let's get real. Fanatics like us will pay any price. How many of these $300 HP-15s are sold on eBay in a year? A couple of dozen? Does this strike you as a population large enough to market to?

HP may well bring back new iterations of the classic calcs. But it won't be due to eBay prices.

[john smith]

<<...HP may well bring back new iterations of the classic calcs. But it won't be due to eBay prices....>>

Amen. I expect them to sell HP-15C about $80, 11C maybe $50, 32SII maybe $70, and 42S maybe $100 etc. etc........

If the pricing point is not in the affordable range of ordinary public, their comeback will be doomed to fail. I think they know that. They will try to keep or match their original price points.

I quoted ebay price earlier just to show the madness of lunatics. No students will be able to afford that prices. And without the student market, kiss the calculator business goodbye for ever. I think their (hp) marketing guys know that.

[Eddie Mabillard]

you are correct when you state that the market is small for calcs and hp will not make profit on calcs, but hp made a wrong decision in keeping calcs and not letting them to agilent, one thing hp should think, customer who are deceived by their policy, like I am, are lost customer for all their other products, I will never buy any more an hp product, I whish I could decide on big contract for millions of$, I'd be pleased to discard HP.

[Norm]

Ernie is da man.... Now I got somebody else who says says to un-discontinue the 34C, 15C, 41C, and others.

Imagine what a sweetie of an LED display U could make these days.... instead of wire-bonding all those teeny tiny little LED die together, U could make a strip thats just as wide as the whole dang display... and it could be way more efficient on the power draw also. And to heck with those chinsy LCD's for awhile, imagine how people would glom onto the new ones (yeah I think they'd go along with larger batteries.... esp if the thing can display all 8's for 3 days straight before you have to replace a pair of AA alkaline batteries.)

Hey Ernie, and anybody else: CONSIDER the philanthrophy angle. I BET YOU AN HP OWNER'S MANUAL that HP SPENDS WAY MORE on crack babies and digging latrines in 3rd world countries (charity to white-wash their sinister motives) than it costs to maintain operations of producing those unique earlier models (!) .

And even that statement just made, a TRUE statement, sort of presumes that resurrecting those models is a non-profit deal (what the critics say) in actuality it would probably create modest to medium profits, commensurate with how hard they can push them thru marketing (and face it... its entirely dependent on the young people and the publik skules .... you'd have to return to teaching math with paper & pencil as a foundation, and young people actually learning the math inside of their heads, rather than just nodding their head up and down as they look up briefly from the videogames they are playing on the 49G .... ).

Yah, want a 49G with wireless roaming internet access and firewire access to the automatic microprocessor controlled toilet. That way I can flush it automatically when I am way far away clear across town.... makes as much sense as including A=pi*r^2 in a formula database, if U ask me.....

:o)

[Erik Ehrling (Sweden)]

> Lots of forum members seem to like the HP-34C, the 15C, the 32SII, and the 42S. Just how much trouble would it be to bring them back -- unmodified?

Personally I keep my fingers crossed; hoping that the 42S will be among the calculators HP put in production again.

Unmodified would be great, but if they added 32K RAM (as the original 42S supports 32K!) and a serial port it would be even greater...

Best regards,
Erik Ehrling (Sweden)