This can be said to be speculating using previous products projected release date from pimax vs actual release date. Which is a very long list of which has ranged as good as 6 months later to 2+ years. So it can be said to be in part based on factual past data. Pimax has yet to meet a product release date that has been announced.
When they do meet an announced product release date it will quite the hallmark accomplishment.
This is a valid point of view, and I agree that past performance can be a predictor of future performance.
But in my evaluation, I think thatâs very questionable in this case. Pimax has grown its employee count massively within the last year or two. And so there is good reason to expect different results from this company. Indeed, it would be strange for a company to grow so much and yet not see any change in its performance. In such a case, what are all those new employees doing? Just sitting around?
For this reason, I put very little weight on anything Pimax did further back than a year ago as a predictor of future performance. And I think anything Pimax did during their early kickstarters is ancient history that has essentially no relevance on evaluating Pimax today.
I believe Pimax intended to start reversing its reputation with the Reality series. Various things that Pimax has said on the forums and videos suggest that this is the case. But what I think is happening now is covid has hit them hard with random delays which they canât really do anything about nor predict with any accuracy. So itâs making it look like the same bad performance they had before even though itâs actually for a completely different reason that they (and every other company) have no control over. Itâs sure making them look bad though because of how it appears to link to their past history.
They shouldnât have publicly announced these future dates to begin with, especially since covid was already going on at the time. As far as I can tell, there is nothing that they gained by publicly announcing these dates and no reason they needed to do it. I suspect announcing future dates was just a holdover from having started as a kickstarter company. All it did for them was incur PR risk should they miss those dates, which is exactly whatâs happened. So now theyâre taking all this damage from that poor decision shooting themselves in the foot. Pimax would be in such better shape in terms of public image right now if they had never announced these dates.
Except the current performance still is supporting prospective predictions. The Crystal for example is now 3 months late and if releases just after CES as recently announced will be 4 months late. The 12k we know is not releasing by monthâs end and will have minimally 4 months from now at the earliest.
That being said yes it is an improvement âIFâ it releases with the current list of announced Ready features.
At present again if releases as announced/planned on time is Portal.
However there is imho one big imho understandable hurdle that could delay things and that is the current Covid outbreak in China.
I do think and hope the Reality series can help pimax with further improving there image. Which imho really isnât too bad considering where they started and how quickly they had to grow from design team to manufacturing and distribution. It has beem a rough road but they keep learning and trying to do better.
I just fail to see how employee count has any relationship to a success. Surly efficiency is an indicator of success. Profit is an indicator of success. Reputation is an indicator of success. Pimax sadly has non of these. Theyâve survived on investment have a bad reputation to this very day and have taken on 100 people for Portal production which we have no idea if itâs a viable business.
Hey OP, remember that you own an 8KX. During the initial Kickstarter, the status of that device was even less clear than the 12 K is today.
During the original Kickstarter, I was 100% sure that the device you are now using was complete vaporware, because the company didnât barely talk about it.
Contrast that with the 12 K. We know what the housing looks like, we know what the lenses look like, we know that Tobii is working on the eye tracking for it. Kevin, i.e. @PimaxUSA has held it in front of camera on a stream.
Letâs cut Primax a little slack Given the current C 19 situation. This company has been ludicrously more transparent this time around than they were during the first initial 8K Kickstarter campaign pimax is improving by leaps and bounds.
An increase of employee base is one of the indicators of success. With the reverse being true as well if a company ends up needing to downsize there employee base.
I worked for a company that had 8 production lines. Half of which only ran seasonally and used seasonal employees to staff them. They had done so well that 3 of the seasonal lines were upgraded to full time lines requiring them to increase there full time employee pool. The last year I was there due to poor management decisions they lost a lot of business after 4 years of success. Resulting in having to downsize there employee base back to 3 lines.
The poor decisions ended up with them selling there facilities less than 3 years later. This was/is a fortune 500 company.
Pimax is indeed growing even though the road has been bumpy. But they are not only still here but are expanding there capabilities by expanding there employee pool which will include not just factory workers but also higher level positions.
Indeed it was clearly advertised at that time to be just a prototype limited release that may take a long time to release. And sure for the KS Backers could have released it in a rough state. But instead waited a bit longer and added features and released a more polished consumer product then what would have been more akin to maybe something like an Oculus dk1.
Imagine a company that makes 1000 units a day with 1000 employees. 6 months later they make more, 1100 units a day with less people, only 900. By your reckoning this company is doing worse than 6 months ago because they lost 10% of their workforce. By my reckoning this company is doing much better. Efficiency is the key factor as theyâre 20% up.
Pimax employing 100 more people means nothing when we donât know how many units each is producing every month. If Portal flops then Iâm sure Pimax wonât announce jobs cuts.
Adding 100 people Pimax need to find an extra $1.6 million a year in wages. Thatâs the equivelent to an extra 4000 units a year to break even. If they only sell 3999 theyâre making a loss.
If you concider Pimax make nothing on Portal in the first year thats a 1.6 million loss.
They would have to sell over 30,000 units in year 2 to break even.
In year 3 Portal would start to make profit.
Year 4 Port will be outdated and back to square one.
Not at all sometimes companies realize they do not need as many administrative staff in the office and other staff managing 1 line when they could easily have 1 supervisor manage 2 as has been demonstrated when they are short due to vacation. So yes efficiency in staff can play into things and of course when you replace workers literally with Robots.
Now if you look at Intel there not doing great between lay offs and requesting ppl take unpaid leave. Yet there not really at a great risk of failing.
But nice way to attempt to twist things. There is s difference between optimizing existing production lines to have less staff needed to make the same production at the same level of quality. Vs hiring more staff to expand with setting up new lines to meet demand or to make new products.
My example was quite clear on actual failure that lead to collapse.
Presumptions without any real information. You do not know what the hourly or salary rates are. Or even what positions were needed to hire for.
Now if you want to add you have been basing information on a companies reported full employees not considering potential seasonal or temp workers. I have worked for a company where 30% or more of the factory workers were temps.
So without having any real info save publically numbers of employees without a break down of the company structure and direct sales income vs manufacturing costs. Your only making wild presumptions without a foundation to base it on.
EDIT: After researching average production wage theyâre on $8000 a year so 100 workers are 800,000 a year.
Factory Worker Salary in China.
Thatâs the equivalent of 2000 Crystals or 16000 Portals to break even.
Fair enough and if that was numbers for a Canadian company you can easily double that for extra costs that a company has just to pay them that rate.
Now do you know what pimaxâs sales was - company debits to know if the company had a profit or a loss?
The simple truth pimax can be said to obviously be doing well enough to do R&D to make new products otherwise there would be no new products being announced or worked on.
Donât forget the $35million in investment Pimax received.
So your saying you know the cost of there BOM and cost to produce to make these 2 products. If your using costs on what it might cost for materials your numbers are very likely off.
Not only that but pimax already has other products being produced and even are selling refurbished hmds.
To actually truly know how a company us doing you need to be on the inside. Instead of being on the outside trying to look in on the wrong side of a 1 way mirror. 
Well do you know what these investors have gotten in return? Lots of companies get all kinds of funding and quite often without being required to even pay things back depending on the source. Auto industry bail outs come to mind to which iirc in the US the big 3 was denied at one time due to them flying there private jets claiming they were in financial hardships. lol
Usually goods are worked out in thirds. One third Production costs or BOM. One third Manufacturer Profit and One third retail profit.
If you take Portal at $300 then Pimax will make $100 a unit if there are zero returns. (Best case)
If you take Crystal at $1600 then Pimax will make $533 a unit if there are zero returns. (Best case)
Then deduct 20% VAT Tax and all the other Business taxes, etc
Iâd calculate Portal make $70 and Crystal makes $400 per unit after deductions and returns, etc.
Which you are making presumptions as you do not know if these guesses that might be based on other companies apply to pimax.
So I will leave it at this. Letâs not speculate on pimaxâs financial state as it has nothing to do with enjoying or not enjoying the products we as a community have purchased.
It is these tangents that honestly I can sympathize with Kevin and the other community members find pointless and empty. Letâs stick with discussing the current products and the upcoming releases.
Ok Iâll come back after CES2023.
That statement was true at the time it was made and even with Portal is still in part true as it is also a vr capable device.