Franz and Fred are the same person, some type of anti-Archos probably working at an Archos-competitor, just looking for ways to trash talk anything Archos does.

Apple’s money comes from them having had big enough investments for them to dominate on markets that generate huge growth, huge revenue and that they were thus able to take huge profits from that through strategy.

The same can happen in France with Archos, simply let Archos use 1 Billion Euros, and you can have a huge alternative to Apple right in Paris, Archos can be the strongest hope for Europe’s alternative to the US and Asian consumer electronics giants.

With a billion euros, Archos can not just produce more tablets and beat Samsung and Apple everywhere Archos can get shelf space, they can also take a dominant role in the emerging aspects of interactive ARM Powered technology, that means Archos can be the leader in wearable computing, augmented reality computer, home robotics, Google TV and Chrome OS devices, Archos can also make very strong moves in the smartphone and tablet 5″ convergence space (which they have been dominating as WiFi-only since 2004).

Thanks Fred – exactly what I wanted to say

Do you think the money apple has in the bank comes from their IPO ? the cash they have comes from selling great products with solid margins in massive volume… That’s how they built the war chest…

Charbax wrote:

—-
Every company lives on the money of share holders, that is what stocks are about. Investors put money in a company because they believe in their potential to bring them back lots more.
—–

Do you really believe this ? the only time a company benefit from the money of shareholder it’s when they go public or have a capital increase… Otherwise no money goes to the company,., do you think

So the cat is out of the bag. Q1 numbers are out and archos is now almost dead in water. They peaked in Q4 by dumping products (margin plummeted to 16% – barely sustaining the company) and now growth is no longer there… 8%… In a market growing 100%.. They lost second place to Samsung, they are becoming history, they could not make it because they created poor products… And they could not sell all their gears in Q1… French people should be glad their country did not invest in this company because the stock has been hammered and will get most likely killed tomorrow… Oops…

And I underdog and te French market pretty well – the FSI had looked at investing in Archos but they wanted Mr Crohas gone because he is a danger for this company. Poor management, wrong business decision, racking up money for himself through BSA… They will soon be gone – sorry the writing is on the wall…

Amazon has overtaken Apple within weeks of the Kindle Fire being released as a web-only device. Amazon has overtaken Apple when you look at the audience that visits Amazon.com at least once a month, of those people, more than 80% bought a Kindle Fire and not an iPad in December 2011. Amazon has done a great job destroying Apple on the target audience that Amazon is thus far able to reach. Soon enough Amazon plans to expand their reach into retail stores and let resellers around the world sell the Kindle devices also and not only sell it on their own US-only website. At that point it’s quite likely that Amazon alone has overtaken Apple. Not even counting on all the other Android tablet makers also each of them potentially overtaking Apple easily.

Alcatel One Touch is not a French company, it’s Chinese TCL Corporation who simply have licenced the use of the Alcatel brand for making some phones.

Every company lives on the money of share holders, that is what stocks are about. Investors put money in a company because they believe in their potential to bring them back lots more.

Archos has always been able to sell everything that they could produce. In 2009 or so there was some bad economic climate worldwide and Android wasn’t ready yet for tablet use.

Archos has partnerships with some of the major Chinese manufacturers, those can scale to whichever scale Archos provides them money to scale to. Apple did not build its manufacturing capabilities over time, not at all, what Apple did was they put $1 Billion on the table of the Chinese manufacturers in 2001 and that brought them the iPod a few months later which built half of Apple’s current valuation, and then Apple did the same thing in 2007 for the iPhone, they put $10 Billion on the table for the manufacturers to make the iPhone, and a few months later it was in full mass production. Apple has nothing to do with building something up over long periods of time, the only reason Apple is a huge company is because they put the money on the table at the right time, they put big amounts of money and because the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem is so quickly scalable to any amount of money and scale required for production investment.

Orange is a super crappy company, a monopolist in technology in France, they always tried to delay technology in France. Only thanks to Free and now Free Mobile is any advances in set-top-boxes, IPTV, ADSL+ and now also Fiber and pre-paid smartphones only thanks to Illiad Free has anything ever happened in France on that front. But Free is limited to making ISP type of innovation, Free is not able to make consumer electronics much further than to enable their ISP strategy.

Anyway, you don’t know what you are talking about, and it’s a good thing the next Government of France isn’t listening to people like you.

I’m sorry but I have to strongly disagree.

– Archos has raised more the $80 millions on french stock market over the past few years and has yet to make a substantial hit. they have lived from the money of shareholder

– Archos has not been able to sell “what it can produce”. I remember very clearly them posting a loss due to the write off of inventory in 2009 (or was it 2010 ?).

– even if someone was foolish enough to give them $1B, they would not find enough manufacturing capability to ramp up to generate the kind of return you are putting forward; that was said befor, but let’s say it again: you don’t uderstand supply chain. you need tooling, you need factories, you need workers, you need supply. Ramping up production will mean a lot of work which requires time.

– Orange is  bing in consumer technology. What do you think the minitel was ? what do you think the livebox is ? they have millions of those boxes in the french market. (more than Archos has ever built any product).

– Alcatel has consumer products. go see http://www.alcatelonetouch.com/global-en/

– Apple indeed started to grow big way with the iPhone hit. but it built it’s growth over the years, adding hit product after hit product. So far archos has been doing failed product after failed product until the G8 tablet (G9 is yet to be proven a better success)

anyway – you are a big fan – so understand you are passionate but really stick to the technology this is what you know how to do well… the business side of things is beyond your expertise…

Samsung is basically 25% of South Korea’s GDP. Huawei, ZTE are Government controlled. Microsoft/Intel/Apple have corrupted the US Government for long enough.

Alcatel Lucent doesn’t do consumer electronics and shareholders are mostly not in France. Orange is already 26% French state owned and they also don’t know to do consumer electronics.

Archos has demonstrated over the past 10 years they know exactly how to match consumer needs. Archos has basically always sold out of the manufacturing they can afford to do. With 2x more cash for manufacturing, Archos sells 2x more. With 10x more cash for manufacturing, Archos sells 10x more. That is a proven fact. And when the French Government invests in Archos, they can have specialists make sure of that. It’s basically a 100% risk free investment.

Apple’s massive revenue/profit was built over 2-3 years of iPhone sales. That’s it. Before they Apple was worth less than half of what it is now. And before that, Apple was built exclusively on 3-4 years of iPod sales, NOTHING ELSE.

With just as little as 1 Billion Euros invested, Archos can become one of the biggest consumer electronics companies in the world, providing high-tech jobs in Paris and not only importing US, Korean, Japanese and Chinese consumer electronics goods. Archos becoming a multi-billion Euro company on French soil means new tax revenues for France, them hiring more high-tech workers is the best thing that can happen for the french economy.

Basically France can invest 1 Billion Euros in Archos in June 2012, and Archos can give them back 2 Billion Euros a year later. Then having expanded from 100 employees in the Paris region to near 1000 employees, having 10x more consumer electronics R&D in the works, having expanded manufacturing by 10x to 20x within the year, and quite likely having taken the number 1 worldwide market share position in overall tablets, in ARM Powered tablet/laptop convertibles, in Windows 8 tablets, and with leading the worldwide development of new markets such as wearable computing, robotics, internet of things and plenty more.

read this http://seekingalpha.com/article/455391-is-apple-at-600-still-undervalued
may be you will review your position on Apple’s valuation.

so because their revenue is 1000x less than Apple’s they can overtake Apple in Market share if they had the cash ? 

This is just no demonstration… sorry…  and there are clear indications in the market this is not the case..

Apple who has the cash can’t build enough products to meet demand. that tends to show a shortage on some key elements in the supply chain (components, shipping capabilities, factories, etc…).
Amazon who has the cash and is giving away they Fire at cost is not overtaking Apple in sales.Samsung which has all the money & factories is not overtaking them in sales.

I think you are oversimplifying what is at stake there.

so Archos should be bought by the french population through their tax and funded by government money to become a  worldwide player ? I have not seen Apple, Google, Microsoft being funded by the American govt…
And if they were to go there, I can see Alcatel Lucent, Thales or Orange being more suited to develop a full ecosystem in that domain rather than microscopic Archos… 

I agree with “visitor”, Gaynor and Franz for the background. I disagree with your statement that given money Archos could overtake Apple. Microsoft failed in the MP3 world, Samsung (they are rich and have all the factories they want) failed in the tablet space so far.

it’s not just access to capital, it’s about ability to sell and match consumer needs. Apple ecosystem was built in the last 12/15 years it’s not a big pot of money that will change archos – it’s a consistent strategy that they can maintain over time. and for that they need to drive the gross and net margin, which they did not do on the second part of 2011.

be realistic as well, no one will give them 1 billion in the current economy. Governments are in debt and big players don’t need Archos. so it won’t happen. 

let’s see where they go in 2012, may be they need to carve their own niche or find a differentiated business. I heard they wanted to go into robots now ?

I don’t need to justify my financial analysis to some anonymous comments on my blog. If you don’t like my analysis, you don’t have to read it. You could be working for an Archos competitor, or you could just be some anonymous Apple fanboy. I don’t know.

The money defines what gadgets get made, sold, talked about. So it’s just ridiculous to talk about technology without talking about how the technology can get financed to get made.

For the past 30 years, we’ve had the technology to send Humans to Mars, yet politicians and industry have been against financing that. Instead we spend about 30 times more money marketing and selling the iPhone. We have the technology to power ourselves from 100% renewable power since the 80’ies, but it has always been discarded by politics and industry. Every new car should be 100% electric yet there are financial forces trying to interfere.

Same thing here. You can leave the money on Apple’s bank accounts and they can continue to decide what gets made. Or you can provide a platform in Europe, for example at the Archos headquarters, and let them build bigger headquarters, and put those Europeans to work on an alternative world view for the technological sense of consumer electronics, an alternative way of doing those things to the American, Korean and Japanese corporations.

I always meant to say gross margin, and that counts more for Archos because it’s such a small company, just about a hundred employees in France, 150 employees outside of France. 

Their revenue and profits are about 1000 times less than Apple, yet they can easily overtake Apple in market share if they get access to the cash to do it.

That quite simply demonstrates that Archos market cap is way undervalued and Apple is way over valued.

Archos can quite easily scale their production quite rapidly. More cash, more devices comes out. Not much more R&D needed. Not much more testing needed. They already have good contacts with all the suppliers, manufacturers and resellers from around the world. Every consumer electronics store in the world already personally know the Archos sales people. There is no question that when Archos can supply more devices to stores, those will be sold pretty much automatically.

Why 1 billion? Make it 100 billion and they save the world economy! Lol

Never seen such a pathetic answer… It’s ok we know you are a big fanboy so we understand… I would suggest you focus on the technical news, that is what you are good at. The financial aspects a beyond your core skills.

You have found your spot – don’t ruin your reputation by engaging in moving sand and making false claims that are just completely irrelevant, false if not lies… That is deserving you and your readership

1/ you Should admit your information was misleading as you announced net profit and now you admit it’s gross margin. You should probably start by appologizing.

2/ net profit IS what matters to investors. This is the return on investment once you paid everything else. Archos net profit was roughly 3% in 2011. This is a pathetic return. Even investing in guaranteed short term secured investment returns 4% – which is 33% MORE.

3/ no one will give archos 1 billion. You are probably very junior in supply chain management and production. Archos could not scale it’s manufacturing if they had that money to invest in stock and they don’t have the velocity in point of sales to get the units out.

I travel the world, I see them next to asus and Samsung and apple and when I look at the numbers I see that consumer

Archos G9 was on the market in October. It does not matter for Archos that Texas Instruments 1.5Ghz wasn’t ready before February or that the Ice Cream Sandwich firmware wasn’t ready until last week. Archos pretty much sold 100% of the capacity of 1Ghz Honeycomb skews of G9 that they could afford to manufacture. And all of those are now upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich by a one-click firmware upgrade.

Now having the 1.5Ghz 1GB RAM ICS-pre-installed version for sale nearly half the price of the iPad3 is only a super great advantage and a kick-ass product positioning for Archos to further expand their sales volume according to them having access to more and more cash to expand the manufacturing capacity.

You put the latest Archos and Arnova choices with ICS in the same stores that sell iPad3, Transformer Prime or Samsung Note 10.1, and it’s quite simple to demonstrate and to prove that more than 50% of those consumers buy Archos if they decide to buy a tablet. It’s that simple. Consumers aren’t stupid. They see the Archos choices at half the price, and they see the Arnova choices at 1/4th the price, they get a feel that the Archos and Arnova products are absolutely just fine, nothing is wrong with them, and those even have a range of features that make them better than the other company’s $499 (or $399 iPad2) choices, it’s just plain common sense that Archos can take the top spot of this market.

Obviously there is also Amazon in the USA who has no problem selling more than Apple if they want. And there is obviously the risk that Chinese brands like Huawei and ZTE come and decide to take some market share. But there is ample enough potential sales to be done for everyone wanting to grow to be able to grow by having the right strategy and it’s absolutely obvious that Archos has a great strategy.

The gross margin is what counts for the potential jnvestors, people know that if they invest $1 Billion in Archos tomorrow they can get $1,19 back 3 months later. Basically Archos business model is a sure investment on both the short and long term. Long term, once private or governmental investors invest over $1 Billion in Archos, it’s pretty much assjred Archos becomes the number 1 tablet/s.artphone/laptop/set-top-box/wearable computing/internet of things brand in the world, easily overtaking Apple and potentially challenging all the Chinese brands for a long time. Francois Hollande’s Government will have an eazy choice, enable a world leading Apple-killing consumer electronics company on French soil, in Paris, or France and Europe can continue to import US and Asian brands for the years to come, thus exporting profits instead of keeping profits and creating high-tech growth in Europe.

The 19% gross profit margin strategy from Archos is the absolute correct one. Consumers should not be screwed as they are with Apple’s 366% gross profit margin on the iPhone 4S and 42% gross profit margin on the iPad3. China and European Governments should ban the kind of scam that Apple has been doing on thwir people.

Archos CEO never profited from his company. He took a stock sale which amounts to far less than what Apple executives are paid by salary, not even talking about stock options which make them all Billionaire.

don’t forget Mr Crohas has more than 700,000 new stock options (self attributed)  which became available at the end of december and that he needs to exercise before end of june; we are talking at current price of a $3 million profit and more if the share prices hikes up… so he indeed has full motivation for the short term to push up the stock price by telling great stories

– Archos has not posted 32,9m euro profit margin. this is GROSS margin. this is the margin on their product from which they pay salaries etc… PROFIT margin was below 6 millions with gross margin dropping sharply in H2 2011 to 16% from a 23% in H1. This is really worrying for the company.

– Archos has not announced they will “borrow upwards tens of millions of Euros” but that they signed a deal which will dilute their shareholders in a deal of private funding with the Bank. They will sell up to 10% of the company to the bank – creating new shares  – at a 7% discount and the bank said they will NOT keep the shares but sell them right away in the open market. This is a real blow for the shareholders who are once again loosing money. The stock plummeted since the news by 15%.

– Archos did not announce in their written statement what they will do with the cash

(source of this: http://www.archos.com/corporate/investors/index.html?country=fr&lang=fr )

if you connect the dots, you can see the company is struggling financially – margin is collapsing and they can’t keep up. So they are raising new money and announcing great new products but we have seen that last May with the G9.. it was supposed to be thin, it was supposed to be fast, it was supposed to be cheap and it was supposed to be on the market in September… Well they FAILED on all those points (not to mention bubble in screens and more defects with the 3G stick that did shipped in the US) but the CEO was smart enough to sell off some share just after the announcements (brought home about $10million) just before the stock plummeted during the summer after bad news emerged.

So I would really recommend that 

1/ we wait before we say “wow they are so good”…
2/ stay away from the stock. this company has been living over the past 5 years from the money of its shareholder (spent ~$80 million of shareholder money with no results)

Archos has not yet announced the G10 sizes..

Archos hasn’t announced the sizes of G10 yet. And there might be some unannounced 5″ Arnova tablets, it might be how they reach the 50€ pricing.

Microsoft told me they can dual-boot Android, it’s just that the manufacturer has to decide to do it or not before selling the device. Secure boot works with Android, the point is that hackers in a garage in theory can’t root it and install a hacked firmware on there.