Amstrad announced on Monday that it is slashing the price of the existing e-m@iler to £29.99, down from around £49.99. This move, the company says, is an attempt to "significantly increase the installed base" of homes with an e-m@iler.
"With nearly four years' e-m@iler experience, the revenue per phone has held up well and we continue to add new revenue-earning services to the phone," said Simon Sugar, commercial director of Amstrad, on Monday.
"However, increasing the installed base remains a key objective in order to enhance the future long term profitability of the e-m@iler business," added Sugar.
The first version of the e-m@iler, which is a desktop phone with a keyboard and a screen that let a user send and receive emails, was launched in March 2000. This was followed in February 2002 by an updated version that added a Web browser, a credit-card reader and Sinclair ZX Spectrum games. Both version charge 12p for retrieving email, on top of phone call charges.
According to latest figures, more than 300,000 e-m@ilers have been sold to date. Amstrad fell some way short of chairman Sir Alan Sugar's target of selling one million units by the middle of 2002.
Even at the original price of £79.99, the e-m@iler was sold at a loss, with Amstrad hoping to recoup its money through services and adverts, and by charging users each time they checked their email.
In the twelve months to 30 June, 2003, Amserve -- which is responsible for the e-m@iler -- made a pre-tax loss of £6.1m.
Back in September 2003, Sir Alan Sugar announced that a "new variant of the e-m@iler with additional revenue-earning functionality" would be launched before the summer of 2004.
According to an Amstrad spokesperson on Monday, this "third-generation" e-m@iler is due to be launched within the next three months. Details are still under wraps, but "big changes" are said to have been made to this forthcoming model.
Talkback
I have a 'Mk 1' e-mailer which is a great device spoilt by a poor telephone handset. I changed the original handset which had a continuous 'buzz' because of a poor[cheap?] connector at the handset end.
This was willingly replaced by Dixons but the replacement hand set has the same problem [but of course the unit is now out of guarantee]. We use the the 'phonebook' facility, which is great, but once the number starts to dial, switch to one of our mobile units.
Please Amstrad, stop spoiling your clever technology by using, what I suspect are, inferior peripherals. I didn't upgrade to your latest unit because I need a 'guaranteed' clear reception on my telephone and feel you've probably cheapened things even more to meet the ludicrously low current price [I paid £80 for mine with a Mobile thrown in!]!
Regards
Brian
Tell your Em@iler you are on a pabx line & prefix your number with eg a 9 so it won't be able to dial out to get your (non existant) emails at 12p a go. You then have a good phone at low cost but no email but then you should be using the net to do that.