Framework does exactly what the GP claims to want.
Unfortunately, not many people making those claims _actually_ want them by revealed preferences. They overwhelmingly want the lower price laptops with similar performance specs.
Unfortunately, not many people making those claims _actually_ want them by revealed preferences. They overwhelmingly want the lower price laptops with similar performance specs.
I like and support what Framework offers. But when I last bought a laptop (a couple of years ago now) the FW13 was almost double the price of a similarly-specc’d and thinner/lighter Asus. (From €1000 to ~€18-1900).
I’d probably pay a ~40% premium for FW, all else being equal, but 80-90% is just too much: it just doesn’t make sense to whatever value-assessment algorithms I’ve developed over time.
It's not ideal, but then working on a laptop never is.
I used to use an 11" as my daily driver (and that was before retina-resolutions were a thing). It wasn't ideal, but it was fine for development work.
13-14" is the sweet spot between power storage, size, and energy efficiency in my opinion.
I'm pretty sure my memory is correct, and for a DIY Ryzen 8840/16GB/1TB it was roughly an 80-90% premium, which I'd not describe as competitive.
Instead, I got an ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED with those specs (albeit a slightly bigger better screen) for exactly 1000 EUR in a local shop.
Now, yes, I could remove the Windows cost (ahem), not pay for a charger, and save a little buying RAM and an SSD from elsewhere, but then it's not remotely an apples-to-apples comparison.
If you want to quibble with words, you're right that I could have hedged more in my original comment, e.g. "cost can be competitive depending what exactly you are looking for". I'm not denying your experience for what you wanted, but for what I wanted, the costs were pretty close.
Pirate Windows and using an existing charger saves ~€200. You can shave a little more sourcing your own RAM and SSD but probably not huge amounts, from memory at the time.
So the comparison becomes something like “if you spend your time and energy sourcing multiple components, and don’t mind pirating your OS, and have an old charger to use, you can maybe reduce the premium you pay for a Framework to 30-50%”.
and you'd be one of the higher ones.
But a 40% premium is not enough to sustain framework imho. The business model of framework is that you don't buy a new laptop, but just upgrade. Therefore, the lifetime value of one customer on framework is less than that of an Asus buyer (who would have to buy a new laptop every new CPU generation or when batteries die, which is probably at most 5 years).
Therefore, framework has to charge a lot more per customer to make the business make sense. 2x premium is not unreasonable under this sort of assumption.
I personally do think they're doing a good job of course, but i do also wonder the long term viability because their customers are so niche.
> Therefore, framework has to charge a lot more per customer to make the business make sense. 2x premium is not unreasonable under this sort of assumption.
If this is their model, maybe it makes sense from an MBA perspective, but I'm more in the MBAs-are-ruining-the-world camp, and I hate it.
A few points:
- I suspect that private buyers of laptops rarely have strong loyalty to a single brand, so Asus et al can't assume a long chain of purchases over time - they have to continue to compete on price and specs. Framework can probably assume stronger brand loyalty than every other manufacturer out there, based on a) if you've paid their hefty premium, you're really into what they're offering, and b) you've paid the high price of entry for the promise of lower-cost upgrades down the line, which you can only get from Framework. So Framework can probably assume a longer guaranteed income from each customer than any other manufacturer, even if the actual value decreases over time (due to lower cost of upgrades vs. full systems). However, if the upgrades are profitable as individual items, they still win.
- I'd prefer to see Framework sell computers and components at the lowest possible price they can while still being a viable business, with the margin of those items each justifying their existence individually. I appreciate that their economies of scale are different to larger manufacturers and their designs may be more expensive to deliver - this would be covered by a (modest) premium.
- Ultimately, I'd characterise the business model you described as "we'll f*k you on entry, and you might claw back some value over time". I'd rather aim for "we'll sell you a good product for a reasonable price today, and then delight you with the bonus of upgradability later on".
- I wonder whether their issue might actually be scale of manufacturing: that they can't deliver enough systems quickly/reliably enough to compete for a broader market (which would require lower margins to attract more price-sensitive customers) thereby driving them to target a more limited market of nerds who love the repairability concept, and also price higher per system to make the numbers work?
It does not. An MBA would hopefully teach someone to understand it gives Framework a USP and they only need the same margins as anyone else.
> A few points
Of those the first and last are the sort of things an MBA should teach someone to think about. The second is much the same and part wanting an efficient market (i.e. what free market capitalism is supposed to deliver). the third is entirely right.
If Framework makes the same margin as other manufacturers its viable. If they get more sales than they otherwise would because people want to buy something that will last it is better business sense than making something just like everyone else. its their USP.
But with the current increase in prices of hardware, i expect people to start thinking about repairability and upgradeability, which would increase the total size of potential customer base.
This is also an entirely different issue from the lifetime value of a customer.
That was before prices went crazy, though. Now the RAM alone is over 500€. Also, whether the repairability is worth anything I'll find out down the line, but so far it's looking good.