PsyStar sold 768 hackintoshes from April ‘08 thru August ‘09
More than a year-and-a-half later, not to mention endless sturm und drang, and what does PsyStar have to show for its efforts? The company is likely facing a permanent injunction barring them from their primary business and over $2 million in damages though it made less than 800 computers running Mac OS X.
Reading from recently revealed court documents, including PsyStar’s presentation to venture capitalists back in 2008, Computerworld writes that the soon to be dead Miami, Florida-based Mac cloner managed to build and sell only 768 computers running Apple’s Mac OS X despite promising potential investors a sell rate in the millions.
Off the rails…
Conservative projections — 70,000 (2009); 470,000 (2010); and 1.45 million (2011).
Aggressive projections — 130,000, 1.87 million and 12 million in 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively
The company based its “aggressive” sales plan on $24 million in funding, as well as the availability of a hackintosh laptop—something the company promised would be available by the first quarter of this year. Obviously, given PsyStar’s brush with bankruptcy and the lack of the promised portable, the company never received the large investment it hoped for.
PsyStar will be back in court on Dec. 14 when the bench will consider Apple’s requests for remedy, which include a permanent injunction from building Mac clones again and a whopping $2.1 million damage award for Apple.
Would anyone be surprised if the judge threw these clowns in jail for 30 days just for good measure? It certainly would serve them right…
What’s your take?
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November 30th, 2009
Prystar was just attempting to fulfill a consumer need for computers than ran Mac instead of Windows. Not everyone has $1200 to $2000 for a new Mac especially in this tight economy.
If you the consumer have a limited budget of say $500 for a new computer, but wanted a Mac instead of a PC. What options do you really have?
IMO: Apple missed two great marketing opportunities.
One: Apple could have released a PC version of OSX when Vista was launched. Apple would have a market share around a 25%+ by now and would have had a world presence like Microsoft.
Two: Apple, instead of suing Prystar, could have licensed OSX to Prystar, Apple could have received a healthy computer royalty for each Prystar sold .It would benefited Prystar, Apple and of course you the consumer.
So why were only 800 computers sold? Probably due to the lack of advertising and maybe the pending lawsuits. Conditions like those are never favorable to any company attempting to bring something to the marketplace.
Who was the apparent loser in all of this….? Prystar….?
Or you….the Consumer ?