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Facebook Media Social Networks

Facebook Portal Sales Are 'Very Low' (fastcompany.com) 40

Posted by msmash from the boom,-roasted dept.
Facebook's Portal video-chat device -- which puts a camera and a sensitive microphone in your living room -- isn't flying off the shelves, Fast Company reported Friday, citing supply-chain sources and store sales reps. From the report: The device, which launched a little over a year ago, has been plagued by the privacy concerns of would-be buyers from the start. And Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin tells Fast Company that his sources at the companies that supply parts for the Portal say that shipments of the devices are "very low." "The orders for the components were not high to begin with, and the build volumes were low," Bajarin says. "They [Facebook] never meant to build up a large inventory." Bajarin says the Portal is selling in the "hundreds of thousands" per year range, not in the millions. Rakuten, which tracks online device sales, says Portal accounts for 0.6% of units sold in the overall smart-speaker category, and 3.9% of smart speakers with screens (such as Amazon's Echo Show and Google Home). Anecdotal accounts seem to echo Bajarin's sources. A sales rep at a Best Buy store in midtown Manhattan said they'd sold "hardly any" of the Portals at all. And a rep at the main San Francisco store said the devices sold reasonably well when they launched last year but have slowed since then.
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Facebook Portal Sales Are 'Very Low' More

Facebook Portal Sales Are 'Very Low'

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  • Duh. (Score:3)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @02:32PM (#59323228)

    And I don't think this is about privacy considering how rapidly we are all putting cameras and microphones all over our house.

    It's just that nobody wants or needs the product. There have been tons of similar products in the past, you can do the same damn thing with your phone, a tablet, your laptop, etc.. It's a dated concept that nobody gives a shit about.

    • Exactly. I have Amazon Echos and Ring cameras all over my interior and exterior of my house. I have no need for another ecosystem.

      • Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @02:53PM (#59323336)

        Exactly. I have Amazon Echos and Ring cameras all over my interior and exterior of my house.

        It sounds like it's not your interior and your house, but it is Amazon's interior and exterior of Amazon's house.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slaker ( 53818 )

      I have a couple Echo Shows that I use for teleprescence. I can check on my parents and keep in touch with a far-flung friend; we leave them and carry on a conversation as if we still lived together.

      Even if I were willing to buy to someone else's box, it wouldn't be Facebook's; I don't participate in their ecosystem at all.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Hillie ( 63573 )

      It has everything to do with privacy and Facebook's reputation. FB has a reputation of being extremely evil and undermining users' privacy at every turn, then the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

      This is a perfect example of how companies can shoot themselves in the crotch with a BFG by doing evil sadistic shit they shouldn't be doing.

      If Facebook hadn't done all the negative things it did and didn't have the negative reputation it has, these could probably outsell most everything else because the other ones don'

      • Re:Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @03:16PM (#59323406) Homepage Journal

        I mean video call devices are this thing of 80s sci-fi movies that even though tons of devices can do it none of it caught on because they all use different protocols and proprietary platforms which is the KILLER of all things fun: Copyright and Refusing to settle on a standard = We'll never see BTTF or Total Recall style video calls that are standard across the world.

        This. Probably the biggest mistake Apple has made since failing to license the Mac operating system in the 1980s was failing to license FaceTime. If I can only use it with a fraction of the people I call, then what good is it? Same goes for FB Messenger, Skype, etc. We don't need more video chat apps or video chat hardware. We need interoperability across the ones we have. And until we have that, adoption will always be poor.

        • If they make it interoperable, then they lose their hostages so there's no incentive to provide the product at all. It's hard to rip off someone who is free to walk away, so they've decided it's better to have a slower deployment, and just hope that they trick enough "early adopters" that network effects can eventually build up. OTOH, if they started from freedom, they might get more users but they'd be harder to trap.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            Except that you can't really capture users unless you also take anticompetitive steps to prevent other apps on your platform from offering similar functionality. Apple incurred all of the costs of building up FaceTime, but because their infrastructure isn't federated with everybody else's, you can't call a Facebook Messenger user from FaceTime. So instead of users doing everything within their ecosystem and thus becoming familiar with it and not wanting to switch to any other ecosystem, they instead drov

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

              Except that you can't really capture users unless you also take anticompetitive steps to prevent other apps on your platform from offering similar functionality. Apple incurred all of the costs of building up FaceTime, but because their infrastructure isn't federated with everybody else's, you can't call a Facebook Messenger user from FaceTime. So instead of users doing everything within their ecosystem and thus becoming familiar with it and not wanting to switch to any other ecosystem, they instead drove t

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                What you said is true if Apple made money on audience. They don't - they make money on hardware (and increasingly, services).

                Hardware sales are audience. A person who doesn't use a phone isn't going to buy a new one, and a person who doesn't do anything that is platform-specific has less disincentive to switch platforms, which means lost hardware sales. You're creating a distinction that simply does not exist.

                Thus, FaceTime now is more to show how "easy" video conferencing is - you tap on a contact, tap FaceTime, and a couple of seconds later they're on the screen. No configuring servers, or logins or other thing.

                Yeah, but the problem is, in computers, once you've seen that something can be done, and seen that it is worth doing, creating a competitor is just a matter of hiring enough people and making it happen. So that buys them

            • you can't call a Facebook Messenger user from FaceTime.

              But you can call them via Facebook Messenger on iOS and macOS.

              So, it doesn't drive people away from the platform, just from a particular App or OS feature, all of which have some reasonable way to accomplish the same task with relative ease. Same with all the other examples mentioned.

              I recently went on a cross-country trip with someone who had a Samsung S4 running Moldy Cheesecake, or somesuch. When we returned home, I was able to push the photos I had taken on my iPhone directly to his Android phone, after

          • If they make it interoperable, then they lose their hostages so there's no incentive to provide the product at all.

            Wrong!

            See:

            https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]

        • We don't need more video chat apps or video chat hardware. We need interoperability across the ones we have.

          It’s not as if the lack of interoperability is a huge problem. I can accept video calls from FaceTime, Telegram, and FB Messenger on my phone (and having multiple apps really isn’t a problem on any smartphone capable of running a modern mobile OS). Catch is, I will most likely just message back the caller and say “I don’t want to video chat, sorry.” Video calls are unpopular because most of the time, being able to see the other person doesn’t really add any additional

        • Probably the biggest mistake Apple has made since failing to license the Mac operating system in the 1980s was failing to license FaceTime.

          They wanted to; but were given nearly 1 BEELION reasons they couldn't, in a multi-year group of lawsuits that are still ongoing:

          https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

          If you notice VirNexT's "Press Releases", litigaing against Apple is basically the only actual "business" this ex-CIA-filled Patent Troll engages in.

          https://www.virnetx.com/news-p... [virnetx.com]

          So, if you want to blame someone for FaceTime not being an "Open Standard", as Jobs' off-the-cuff comment suggested was the original plan; look no further than the Easte

      • If it wasn't such a PITA to get video working with SIP maybe we'd have standards-based devices. But it is a massive one. I tried several different clients and a couple of different howtos and never got two-way video+audio working with Asterisk.

    • And I don't think this is about privacy considering how rapidly we are all putting cameras and microphones all over our house.

      I'm sure it's partly about privacy. Facebook has pretty much the worst reputation around when it comes to protecting it. It would be surprising if they weren't less trusted than others, like Google or even Amazon.

    • I’ve got a whole bunch of the Merkury 2-for-$20 smart bulbs that Walmart sells, and control them with several Echo Dots that I picked up the last time Best Buy had them at “Prime Day” pricing.

      Voice controlled lighting is convenient. It’s one of those things you’ve gotta experience to realize the benefits. Plus, there’s the whole Star Trek-ish aspect of being able to tell a computer to dim the lights.

      But yeah, I don’t see what Facebook brings to the table with all

  • Hmmmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr Bubble ( 14652 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @02:35PM (#59323252)

    I'm trying to think of why extending Facebook privacy to audio and visual feeds, right in my living room, wouldn't sell well and I am just stumped.

  • Facebook Ain't cool anymore. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @02:38PM (#59323264)

    Amazon and Google are the cool guys now.
    Facebook selling out to the Russians to influence the elections and increase political tension doesn't necessarily make us want to jump on that brand.
     

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Nah... Amazon and Google aren't cool anymore, either. Neither is Apple for that matter. I'm not sure what technology companies are considered to be cool anymore, actually. Slack, perhaps? If you want to be cool, you really need work for a craft brewery or an organic food company it seems.

      I just think that Facebook's well publicized privacy intrusions over the past few years aren't exactly a good selling point when you're selling devices with cameras and microphones in them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      Facebook 2 seems pretty hip with the kids.

  • ... people without proper care... Is "very low"?

    I find that quite disturbing and callous.

  • Testing the waters? (Score:3)

    by BeerCat ( 685972 ) on Friday October 18, 2019 @03:04PM (#59323380) Homepage

    Back when Steve Jobs was still alive, the Apple TV was introduced. It was always billed as "a side project". And yet, it's still around, and now competes with other TV boxes / dongles, suggesting that the "side project" was always reckoned to be a slow burn type product.

    In the UK, Facebook have started TV advertising of the Portal, suggesting that the introduction last year was in the same league as the Apple TV: work out distribution, pricing an features in small scale sales, before ramping up the effort.

    (The selling point is that it is a larger screen than a phone, and you can be further from it and still be in shot)

    It is likely that they are pitching it at those with a fixed PC and use FB for keeping in touch, rather than those who live their lives by their phone (and are probably on other channels than FB). In the same way that the Nintendo Wii was bought by non-gamers, this might catch on with the non-techie types.

    Or it could flop dramatically, of course

  • Having this All-Seeing eye of Zuckeron around doesn't seem to add any value to me, over video calls I could already do with my phone in a lot more portable way.

    It was kind of disturbing to me seeing ads for this thing that featured the Muppets, or all things...

    • It was kind of disturbing to me seeing ads for this thing that featured the Muppets, or all things...

      What's more, the ad that I've seen features miss piggy using a digital wolf mask to frighten little[r] pigs. They're literally advertising to children the act of using their product for terrorism. What's next, they'll show us how easy it is to use it for swatting?

  • At least the video game is a big hit. :D

  • Well surely people need to know it exists for it to sell.

  • My wife asked me why I would always only talk whispering to her in the house.
    I said: "Because I fear Zuckerberg is listening in on us!"
    My wife chuckled.
    Alexia chuckled.
    Siri chuckled.

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