[NTLK] How many Newtons were sold?

[robinson pereira]

Oh, man....

2010/4/27 Ed Kummel <tech_ed at yahoo.com>

> It would have never happened....getting Newtons in the quantities listed
> was just impossible. I have several stories I've documented on this site
> where I attempted to get thousands of Newtons from Apple to supply to
> various large organizations and government agencies. Attempts to get them
> out of Apple directly just resulted in my being told that I would have to go
> through the Newton stores to get the Newtons I needed. Most Newton stores
> received a dozen or so Newtons per shipment and my calls to several stores I
> was told I could only purchase 2 Newtons at a time....go figure...I could
> have made *SOOO* much money but Apple refused to sell them...It was very
> disheartening to tell you the truth. And then one day, I was at a Mitre
> building in Reston VA, discussing multi-path wireless network protocols when
> my AllPoints card which was plugged into my Newton 2100, received an email
> on my DTS mailbox. I read the email right there in front of the Mitre person
> I
>  was working with and showed it to him. It was from a Newton store I was
> subscribed to, and it said that because Apple was killing the Newton, they
> were closing up shop...Needless to say, that meeting I was in was also cut
> short. Mitre eventually went Palm..which my company didn't do anything with.
> Oh well...
> Ed
> web/gadget guru
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> By Galactic God in Futurama
>
>
>
> "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at
> all."
>
> --- On Tue, 4/27/10, James Fraser <wheresthatistanbul-newtontalk at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> From: James Fraser <wheresthatistanbul-newtontalk at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [NTLK] How many Newtons were sold?
> To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
> Date: Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 6:32 AM
>
> Hello,
>
> --- On Mon, 4/26/10, Ryan <newtontalk at me.com> wrote:
>
> > It's roughly 60,000 per year.  About a 5 year
> > lifespan.  Problem though is that there was so much
> > research and development that it was still quite a financial
> > loss even at sales of 300,000. I've also got some research
> > and development numbers and the cost is staggering.
>
> It might be worth pointing out that the potential revenue Apple gave up
> when they (or, perhaps more accurately, when Steve Jobs) gave the Newton the
> ax at the exact moment they did was staggering, too, if the below is
> correct.
>
> >From the Newton Hall of Fame (https://www.msu.edu/~luckie/hallofame.htm):
>
> >Five months later (February 27, 1998, Press Release) Steve Jobs killed the
> >Newton OS, the MessagePad, and eMate300. This surprised many, especially
> >the state of Texas that was planning on buying several million eMates to
> >replace students textbooks and the entire country of Australia that
> >actually planned to replace the governments aging PC computers with all
> >eMates. We call it "snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory." Why,
> >because a laser focus on Macintosh was needed to revive/save Apple
> >Computer.
>
> If saving Apple was the paramount concern, I can't help but think that
> selling eMates on that kind of scale would have gone a long way toward
> pulling Apple out of their financial slump, especially given the fact that
> there was nothing like it on the market at the time.
>
> Yes, I can understand Jobs' reluctance to invest *further* resources into
> R&D for the Newton/eMate.  After all, a company that is low on dough can
> hardly afford a lavish expenditure on R&D and needs to focus on getting
> product out the door to improve their cash flow.
>
> However, when you have people ready to hand you their money for a
> /finished/ product and you choose that time to tell them, "Sorry, we're
> discontinuing it!" it looks a little odd.  Particularly when the head of the
> firm was giving assurances that, "the Emate has a bright future"  and "sales
> of the current MessagePad are brisk," a few months before:
>
> https://www.msu.edu/~luckie/jobslet.htm
>
> That being the case, I'm not entirely convinced that the thought process
> that went into giving the Newton the ax was rooted exclusively in
> cold-blooded decision making. ¬_¬
>
>
> Best,
>
> James Fraser
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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