So your wallet’s feeling a little light after Christmas? We’ve all got to save where we can in this dismal financial climate, and freeshipping.org is intended to help do just what it says in the URL: save you money on buying consumer goods by finding offers that save you the shipping and other costs when you make a purchase. They seem essentially to be ferreting out links and deals as they are announced online and posting them on their homepage – there’s no rhyme or reason to who is making offers at any given moment, but they have the coupons and deals organised by store, so if you’re considering a purchase from a particular shop or band you might do well to click over there and check if there’s a deal on.
They are also running a price comparison program, but it’s a little clunky and hard to navigate, and doesn’t give you a lot of information about the sources they’re searching to bring you the They do have a lot of products listed by category, from iPhones to Plasma TV’s by the way of glow-in-the-dark paintballs, but I certainly wouldn’t reccomend making a purchase based solely on what you find here – instead click around the other big sites and use them as a benchmark (yes, I know I’m teaching my granny to suck eggs here). If you happen to be based in the UK, another useful website that holds a lot of consumer information, particularly on financial products, and that mails out lists of deals and freebies from time to time is moneysavingexpert.com, from the same team that put together music price comparison site http://tunechecker.com/, a site designed to save you money on buying .mp3’s.
Sony has announced that they are planning on launching their own Apple iTunes competitor which will be an online store selling music, movies, and books as well as other downloadable applications for mobile products. This does sound very familiar, as Sony has already tried to compete with iTunes on the Sony Connect product which is no longer in existance. Sony’s top executives didn’t specify when the Internet store, tentatively called Sony Online Service, would go live or what it would look like. But the online storefront, announced at a management strategy meeting in Tokyo, is likely to bear some similarities to Apple’s iTunes store and would be Sony’s most ambitious attempt to link its products to its own vast library of digital content.
Current Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer has been set the mission to for a cohirant software strategy since taking over the top job in mid-2006.
The global recession has pummeled Sony’s businesses and left its earnings in a shambles. With consumers cutting back on electronics, Sony says it’s heading for its second straight loss. This fiscal year through March 2010, Sony predicts an operating loss of $674 million, from last year’s $2.6 billion loss. Sales are expected to slide 6%.
Sony executives refused to say how much it plans to invest in the new online service. Kazuo Hirai, executive vice-president for networked products and services, said the service would be based on Sony’s PlayStation Network. The Web-based gateway for PlayStation 3 video game consoles has been Sony’s most successful push into online commerce so far. Launched three years ago, the PSN has 33 million registered users and sells thousands of downloadable games, TV shows, and movies. This fiscal year, Sony expects the service to bring in $500 million in revenues, triple the previous year’s total. Last month, Sony signed a deal with Netflix that lets PS3 users stream movies and other content through the gaming console. “There’s some debate as to whether all PlayStation Network users would migrate to the new service,” Hirai said. “We would target quite a few of them.”
Will this new online store save Sony and get them back on track to the revenues of previous years? Will this also mean that Sony will remove their music from iTunes in the aim to get users to quickly adopt their new service?
In a very surprising move, Microsoft has started selling computers and even third-party software via its online store.
This is a small part of a much broader push for Microsoft as they think that stores like Apple’s might bring in much higher margins for them and their products. Microsoft had said it would sell PCs at its brick-and-mortar stores, but it plans to open just two of those this year, including a Scottsdale, Ariz., location that opens later Thursday.
Early on Thursday, though, Microsoft revamped its online store, which had been an outlet only for Microsoft products. The remake of the online store comes just as Microsoft is launching Windows 7.
Clicking on laptops brings up a list of 10 models, organized by price, including two models below $750. The site also offers three Netbooks and a single desktop model, Lenovo’s $999 A600 all-in-one.
On the software front, Microsoft is selling Norton 360 and Adobe Photoshop, along with Windows, Office, and other Microsoft products. Accessories include a lot of Microsoft keyboards, mice, and Webcams, along with flash drives and blank DVDs from other companies.
Audioholics has commemorated their 10th anniversary with a bang and has launched their own online store front. This is a big step for the home theater review publication, the store will be the first of its kind to be built on the back of an industry-leading magazine.
Audioholics currently has an existing base of over 1 million readers per month and to leaverage this readership into purchasing some of the leading electronics brand should be a simple process that will lead to great success.
The Audioholics store is a partnership between Audioholics and Woodland Venture Holdings LLC. Funding for the project was lead by an undisclosed CEO of a large asset management company. Woodland Ventures operates some of the top e-commerce stores online in which currently serve a customer base of over 50 thousand customers per year. This is a great match for Audioholics because Woodland have ventures based in this online store market and they know how the industry works and operates. The store itself lists premium brands from all over the electronics industry, including Yamaha, VizionWare and APC.
Apart from the basics of an online store the Audioholics store will also included added features such as an email client, forum and a customi`ed help support. However, the key features to this new Audioholics online store is that it provides lifetime product support, free 3-year extended warranties, free shipping on most of it product lines, and all products carry a 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.
There is a real opportunity for Audioholics to leverage on either its strong readership numbers, great partnership with professionals in leading the industry (Woodland Ventures), or even on the decent amount of traffic to their website. Which ever way they approach this opportunity I always like seeing new companies in the online sales market, who can provide com®®petitive price, premium brands and great customer service. If you are a bit of a techie and like to equip your home or workplace with high end electronics then make sure you check out the new Audioholics store.
