But the way you've stated this makes it sound as though right now somebody is making nine million identical phones in one SKU, while if they offered Firefox OS in some markets they'd have to double the number of SKUs. The reality is that they probably have dozens of SKUs for those nine million phones, and adding a handful more to sell another million phones wouldn't phase them at all.
One of the accusations thrown at Nokia (back in the heady days of the 6310i for example) is that they made too many SKUs. The contrast is often made to Apple. But that is (as so often) a triumph of marketing. Apple are just as happy to produce different SKUs they're just reluctant to provide a sensible way of distinguishing them for end users resulting in silliness like needing a whole sentence to specify which actual model of computer you bought from them.
Having more SKUs makes sense as long as your management understand that not all SKUs are created equal. The dark blue cars don't need to be crash tested separately from the green cars for example. You can sell both kinds of cars, without incurring extra costs for crash testing. The UK phone and the US phone are separate SKUs because Americans would be puzzled by a UK-compatible charger. But the actual phone hardware is the same, so you don't need a separate production line for the actual phone, just separate packing to bundle the charger.
Those of us in Europe get to see the wider variety of SKUs for some products because of what's called the grey market. The EU requires internal free trade so if SKU #48 originally intended for Spain actually sells rather well (and for more money) to people in Germany, it will soon find itself on trucks or planes headed to Germany even though the manufacturer explicitly wanted to prevent that.
Posted Sep 6, 2013 11:41 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
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The dark blue cars don't need to be crash tested separately from the green cars for example.
Sure, but if it's ICE cars and you want to produce electric cars then you'll need to test them separately. Difference between Android and FirefoxOS is closer to difference between ICE and electric motor rather then difference between dark blue car and green car. Well, perhaps you can compare it to difference between diesel and injector, but these, too, must be tested separately (at least some things must be tested separately). At least crash tests must be repeated because different engine types will destruct in different manner.
"Too many SKUs"
Posted Sep 6, 2013 20:55 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
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"At least crash tests must be repeated because different engine types will destruct in different manner."
Probably not, type compliance for which destructive testing is specified would usually cover an entire vehicle model. Indeed this is not a coincidence, type compliance rules were written with an eye on what manufacturers considered to be one "model" of vehicle, and since then manufacturers obviously don't want to introduce a model which would consist of multiple types requiring separate compliance because of the added cost.
I haven't read the US rules, but the EU rules are clear that only a totally different type of power plant, e.g. batteries and an electric motor rather than a combustion engine, would count as a separate type and need fresh testing. So long as the body plan is the same, one vehicle can be tested as a stand-in for any number of variants in fuel technology, gearbox, etc.
Most of the crash testing we think of is actually voluntary, it isn't required by law as part of type compliance but is rather a consumer protection activity, albeit sometimes still funded by the government. NCAP and EuroNCAP for example, have no role in type compliance: vehicles that score badly in their tests aren't illegal, they can still be sold in the relevant countries and insured and driven. Car buyers do pay at least some attention though, which is why these programmers are still running. Like Europe's A-E letter efficiency grading on white goods, consumers show some interest in avoiding the poorest performers and that helps push manufacturers in the right direction without legislation.
But we have drifted far off topic.
"difference between diesel and injector"
Posted Sep 30, 2013 17:58 UTC (Mon) by JanC_ (guest, #34940)
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perhaps you can compare it to difference between diesel and injector
Almost all diesel engines use injection, and many of them use computer-controlled injection nowadays, so what's the difference supposed to be?
(You can read all that in the Wikipedia pages you linked to BTW.)
