Running Money by Andy Kessler

Author:Andy Kessler
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780061365645
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

We next got a tour of the company museum next to the lobby. On display were the first mechanical pencil, some old TVs and giant VCRs from the late ’70s, and some new projection TVs. At the end of the tour, they had a 17-inch LCD TV playing video of some Japanese golfers and, I think, a Pocari Sweat commercial. It looked pretty good. I had never seen video on an LCD, but something was wrong. It was too slow between frames. It’s hard to describe, but my eyes started to hurt because some of the previous images were still there as the video played—the golfer’s club was still in midair as the ball was hit. Very weird.

Three women with clipboards accosted me as I was leaving.

“What do you think?”

“Very nice,” I replied. “It’s a beautiful museum.”

“You like the TV?”

“Yes, the TVs were great. I think I have a Sharp TV at home,” I lied as I tried to get away.

“And what about the last one?”

“The last what?”

“The last TV, that one.” One woman pointed to the LCD TV.

“Very nice,” I said.

They all scribbled something on their clipboards.

“You like?”

“Yes.”

“No, no. What you like?”

“I liked the commercial.”

“Good TV?”

I figured I would never get out of there at this pace. “Well, if you really want to know, the screen is a little small. I have a 27-inch TV at home.”

I heard a few “tsk, tsk’s” and more clipboard scribbling.

“And,” I continued, “it’s a little slow between frames, bad hysteresis, I think.” I forgot what hysteresis meant, something from college physics about lags in fields. It sounded good, and I figured that would throw them for a while to get me out of there.

I got to the lobby, and we waited for a taxi back to the train station. I picked up an English version of Sharp Electronics’ annual report and noted that the company was making money and had made increasing amounts of money for the last 10 years.

Our next stop was Nintendo. This meant a bullet train to god knows where and then a couple of slower trains to Kyoto.

Nintendo was in a white nondescript one-story building next to some railroad tracks. It could have easily been a warehouse on the South Side of Chicago. Management rarely met with investors, but we were able to meet with a few hardware designers in a conference room near the lobby.

Nintendo was fascinating. It was the most valuable company in Japan, maybe even the world. Why? Because it was the most profitable company in the world. They were selling tens of millions of Super NES platforms, which at $99 was probably at a loss. But they sold hundreds of millions of game cartridges at $40, which cost them $6. Nice business if you can get it, and they had twitchy fingers around the globe addicted. It struck me that this was the first Japanese company I had spoken to that actually sold software; the rest were just manufacturers with huge factories.

The hardware designers gave

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.