Friday, November 04, 2011 1:43:08 PM
http://dsc.ucsf.edu/publication.php
But here is my take from a previous post and not a single spencer disciple had any rebuttal for my original post.
First in the US there were 155,000 people using electric wheelchairs in 2002. They cost from $3000 to $12,000 depending mostly on the load they can cary.
Most are paid for by third parties and wheelchair bound people typically have a lower than average income with about 79% being unemployed. Third party payers(Medicare, Medicade and health insurance) typically pay 80% of the cost and pay out $4000 to $8000 per chair.
So out of 155,000 users how many would require or be willing to pay for a nav feature? Well that would depend on the cost and I would estimate that a $10,000 chair could cary about $800 in additional cost for a connivence feature.
Now spencer is talking about licensing the design and not actually suppling the parts. Licensing fees for a product design are usually 3% of retail so that gives GOSY $24 in revenue for each chair. If 10% or chair users needed the feature that would give a total market of 15,500 in 2002. Adjust that for population growth and you would have about 17,000 users today.
So the total revenue from licensing would be$408,000 spread over several years. Even if everyone in a electric wheelchair user bought the feature that would be a total US market of $4,080,000 spread years. Now Japan with about 42% of the US would be less.
I guess to a MBA CEO who spends about $300,000 a year and who has only had $11,000 of revenue in 13 years, that's the best he can do.
Opinion from slower0ne@yahoo.com
