"The amazing disappearing phone billtjnamtiw wrote:Nice post................ Why don't you just ask them to go out of business so we all own pretty looking 'bricks'????? It's a startup business, for heaven sake! Have you subscribed to Premier service to help support the company???
It doesn’t take a magician to make your phone bills disappear. It just takes ooma™. Simply connect the device to your high-speed Internet and phone, and, presto, your phone bills are no more."
"HOW DO WE MAKE MONEY?
Well, of course we make some money by selling you this device and the services that come with it. And if that's where our little relationship ends, we'll be just fine with that. You can ooma-away to your heart's delight. But we figured if we offered some really cool services, you might just want to sign up for them. These services are part of ooma Premier, which will always be completely optional."
Another ad line that I've seen but that seems to have disappeared is "OWN YOUR OWN DIALTONE".
I'm guessing that at this point there are something around a hundred thousand ooma users out there. So if the company actually sees $150 for each box sold and their Cost Of Goods Sold is $100, they've taken in a gross profit of $5 million. These are ball park guesses but I'm betting they're pretty close.
When I made the decision to switch to ooma, I was paying Vonage $45 a month for two lines with basically unlimited calling. I had decided that I really didn't need that second line so a basic ooma hub without the Premier Service was all I needed. And I'm guessing that 50% or more of current users arrive at the same decision.
For me this means that if ooma stays in business for 7 months after I made my purchase (March, 2009) I'll break even. Anything beyond that and I'm making money.
Because in my view ooma is a high tech Ponzi scheme. That is, the company is dependent on selling more and more basic units every month to keep their revenues growing and cover their operating costs. When they hit the point where sales stop growing at x percent they will either have to change their business model, find something more compelling than the current Premier features to sell or go out of business.