Google Glass may only be worth a tiny fraction of its asking price

Google charges $1,500 for Google Glass at the moment, but we're told that might be after a pretty significant price hike.

TechInsights, the name behind Teardown.com, recently stripped apart the eyewear and calculated an estimated $79.78 (around £47, AU$85) cost for the components combined.

A Google spokesperson has said that the estimate is "absolutely wrong", according to The Wall Street Journal, but G isn't saying anything beyond that. We're chasing Google right now to see if we can get a clearer idea on how far off the mark it thinks TechInsights is.

That's a pricey meatball

After all, there's a bit more to it all than just adding up the pieces. Putting Glass together will have its own costs – possibly a high one considering how tightly packed it all is - not to mention having to cover the cost of all the development that has gone into the device.

But even then, we can't see it reaching anywhere near the $1,500 mark. Teardown says it's going to take a deeper look, but it doesn't think the cost will change massively.

• You won't find price in our "For" column for Glass, but what do we like about Google's specs?

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Review: Updated: Sony Xperia Z2

How new tech is transforming revenue management

Pharmaceutical companies around the globe are facing a 'perfect storm' of expiring patents, tighter regulatory constraints and increasing buyer demands, putting unprecedented pressure on price and margin strategies.

In response, they are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of putting in place automated revenue management solutions, which provide the centralised transparency and control of pricing essential to optimise revenues and minimise margin erosion.

Sector-specific solutions such as global pricing management and international reference pricing tools ensure that real time data is always made available, to ensure intelligent decision-making across all areas of bidding, tendering and contracting.

James Robinson, director of solutions at revenue management specialist Model N, tells us more.

TechRadar Pro: What current technology solutions are used to support processes such as pricing in pharma/healthcare?

James Robinson: Individually, new commercial and regulatory pressures are significant: together, the combination of expiring patents, tougher pricing pressures and legislative constraints are turning upside down established ways of managing pricing and profit strategies.

Pharmaceutical companies are having to respond by adopting new revenue management solutions. Replacing previously opaque and localised pricing activities, new automation tools ensure timely and informed centralised decision-making, so increasing revenues and margin, minimising price erosion and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Products include Revenue Management, Global Pricing Management (GPM) and International Reference Pricing (IRP) – designed to counteract the practice of individual payers (usually governments) comparing the price they pay for individual drugs with that in a selected number of other markets.

Each solution is designed to ensure that comprehensive, accurate and timely data is available to decision-makers, enabling them to make intelligent pricing decisions based on a full understanding of the implications across different markets in every case. Best practice solutions are also backed up by consultancy device and support from third-party specialists with extensive sector—specific expertise.

TRP: How effective are these technologies in supporting the supplier as the commercial environment changes?

JR: The benefits are substantial and measurable, helping firms build a strong business case for investment in automated revenue management.

For example, analysis of successful implementations has shown efficiency savings of between 40-70% in pricing administration, and the accuracy of price and revenue forecasting improved by 80-90%.

Putting in place appropriate processes to manage, monitor and control pricing, discounting and incentives can deliver a 2-5% reduction in incentive overpayments and a 1-3% improvement in overall margins.

A head of international pricing at a Fortune 500 biopharma company has confirmed: "We reduced our average year-on-year price erosion in Europe by 45%." For a multi-billion euro business, this equates to an annual saving of tens of billions.

TRP: How sector-specific are the technologies currently deployed in pharma/healthcare?

JR: Solutions have been developed to meet the unique dynamics of the global life sciences sector, as suppliers look to move from fragmented, localised, one-off pricing solutions to a fully-integrated, enterprise-wide approach to price and margin optimisation.

For example, revenue management solutions enable the centralised visibility and management of complex multi-division, multi-country operations, involving on-invoice and off-invoice free goods, step pricing and volume discounts. They also overcome poor hand-offs in bidding, tendering and contracting, minimising revenue leakage and optimising profit opportunities.

Global pricing management drives consistency across all markets, assesses the impact of pricing decisions and ensures compliance with individual governments and regulations.

And international reference pricing (IRP) solutions offer a single centralised repository to manage all aspects of local market pricing and optimise launch date sequencing and pricing to maximise revenues.

TRP: What can suppliers learn from other sectors (e.g. FMCG, airline management) in which CRM and pricing systems are more advanced and responsive?

JR: Within every sector, developments in technology directly reflect the priorities of the industry they support. In strongly consumer-focused markets such as airlines, hotels and consumer products, for example, in which product lifecycles are typically short, best practice systems and processes have evolved to enable companies to be commercially agile and responsive to change.

Contrast this with a traditional 'big brand' pharmaceutical environment in which blockbuster drugs have benefited from patent protection, the main focus until now has centred on technologies and systems to support R&D, with the result that CRM and pricing systems have remained embryonic.

However, as the pharmaceutical sector undergoes profound change, 'sticking plaster' spreadsheet-based solutions are no longer enough to provide the flexibility demanded in a more competitive market.

Learning from more advanced sectors, suppliers to life sciences are having to adopt more thorough-going end-to-end automated solutions in order to protect existing margins and maximise revenues and profitability over the lifetime of new products brought to market.

TRP: What are the key attributes of a best practice technology solution in helping companies succeed in a more complex trading environment?

JR: In replacing spreadsheets and multiple isolated pricing tools, the ideal alternative is to centrally manage price and profit strategies through the adoption of some form of integrated revenue management solution linked to a global data source.

The benefits of linking all pricing processes on a single platform will be felt immediately at both an operational and financial level, as the cross-functional pricing team's productivity increases dramatically.

In the past, in the area of price management most of the supplier's efforts have concentrated on getting the launch process right. By contrast, a best practice revenue management solution will provide essential visibility and control to seamlessly support every stage of the end-to-end revenue life-cycle.

Also, in helping pharmaceutical companies learn from more customer-focused sectors, affordable tools are available to help move to an environment that supports customer segmentation, understanding buying preferences and the commercial supply chain. Equally importantly, they enable these to become embedded as part of the organisations' standard processes.

TRP: What are the risks of not investing in these better technologies (e.g. non-compliance)?

JR: Failure to respond to growing external pressures leaves companies open to margin erosion and regulatory exposure. As the number of blockbuster drugs declines, so the number of targeted treatments is increasing. The impact of the 'patent cliff' has been dramatic, with pharmaceutical giants in Europe and the US expected to lose up to $29 billion to patent expiry.

Tighter regulation in drug development and approvals and shorter product life are also having a financial impact on drug developers looking to generate an acceptable return on high R&D investment.

With the growth of IRP, worrying 'billion dollar conversations' are taking place within suppliers, as poorly-informed pricing decisions in one country can result in the loss of margin in another, with hugely damaging results.

As volume growth falls in established western markets, pharmaceutical companies are looking to emerging markets to maintain sales performance. Yet the need for centralised visibility and control is even more acute here, as sales to newer markets are typically at a lower price and reduced margin.

TRP: What are the first steps around technology development which the supplier should consider in looking to improve their profit performance?

JR: The first step is to achieve data transparency. In an environment that previously lacked centralised visibility and control, the right revenue management technologies provide full visibility of net margin – by product and customer group – by reporting data on all elements of the sale and invoicing process.

By modelling this data, the business is then able to analyse the relative potential impact of different pricing scenarios and ensure centralised control of all strategic pricing decisions.

Companies implementing an integrated global pricing platform often experience a degree of surprise at the initial diagnostic phase, when they have full visibility for the first time of all aspects of pricing across their multi-national business. Yet this rapidly turns to a realisation of the opportunities greater control can deliver and forms the basis of an ongoing iterative process of business improvement.

Many companies recognise the issues involved, but respond in a geographically or departmentally siloed rather than a cross-functional way. The results of such a narrow approach will almost certainly fall short of expectations.

It is essential therefore to bring together the relevant C-level executives and other stakeholders involved in price/profit management at the outset and identify those aspects where performance falls short of the ideal, together with the associated causes.

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Video calling and text chat turn Snapchat into WhatsApp with self-destruct

Midmarket companies are embracing Big Data

Midmarket companies of between 2,000 and 5,000 employees are embracing the rise of big data, making it not just the realm of large-scale enterprise, according to a new survey by Dell.

The research, commissioned by Dell and conducted by Competitive Edge Research Reports, shows that 96 per cent of the 300 surveyed organisations are either already using big data projects or are planning to start one in the near future.

This number is made up of 41 per cent with existing projects and 55 per cent with ones on the horizon.

80 per cent believe they need to better analyse their data. The most valuable big data technologies for medium-sized businesses are real-time data processing, predictive analytics, and data visualisation.

89 per cent of those with existing big data initiatives have found a significant boost to company decision making.

Big budgets

The study also found that big data budgets will rise to an average of $6 million (£3.6 million, AU$6.5 million) over the next two years. This is from the current figures of between $2 million (£1.2 million, AU$2.2 million) and $5 million (£3 million, AU$5.4 million).

"Dell's survey shows once again why 'big' data is relative term. Being an enterprise organization with large, complex data sets is not a prerequisite to benefiting from a data-driven mindset. When organizations of any size focus on improving the quality of their business processes by becoming more analytical and data-driven, the potential benefits are limitless," said Darin Bartik, executive director of product management and information management at Dell Software.

"The early success midmarket companies are seeing with their big data initiatives will encourage more growth and investment, and additional returns on that investment will be achieved as they dive further into different datasets and embrace ever-improving analytic capabilities."

• How important is Big Data?

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Opinion: Why the 4K Blu-ray format could be dead in the water

Sony has been talking about Blu-ray in Japan this morning and the news does not bode well for anyone hoping for a new 4K Blu-ray format.

The company's forecasted financial losses, which were already sizeable, have gotten even bigger.

And alongside costs incurred by its withdrawal from the PC business, one of the key reasons given is the decline of the physical media market, IE Blu-ray Disc sales.

Here's the relevant section from Sony's release:

"Sony expects to record approximately 25 billion yen in impairment charges mainly related to its overseas disc manufacturing business. Primarily due to demand for physical media contracting faster than anticipated, mainly in the European region, the future profitability of the disc manufacturing business has been revised.

"Consequently, Sony has determined that it does not expect to generate sufficient cash flow in the future to recover the carrying amount of long-lived assets, resulting in an expected impairment charge. Primarily due to the reason mentioned above, the fair value of the entire disc manufacturing business also has decreased, resulting in an expected impairment of goodwill."

Unpicking the news

Clearly this doesn't spell the imminent death of the Blu-ray market. Indeed, the BVA reported as recently as December that Blu-ray sales were still on the rise, so let's not get ahead of ourselves.

But you've got to wonder, if Sony – the biggest supporter of Blu-ray over the years – is losing faith in disc formats and sees no financial future in them, what hope is there of the Blu-ray Disc Association pushing out a new physical format for 4K?

It would require huge support and investment from all manner of companies across different industries - there has to be a financial incentive and I'm not sure if there is one.

I was at Pinewood Studios for a Sony 4K product event last week, where all questions about a 4K Blu-ray format were simply swatted away. "You'll need to ask the BDA" was the flat response. They really didn't want to talk about it, it was a bit uncomfortable.

There were certainly no hints, winks or off the record briefings about an imminent announcement or release. It didn't sound positive then and it seems even less so now. How many people do you know who subscribe to Netflix versus those who routinely buy BDs? Exactly.

Does 4K have a physical future?

We've been waiting to hear from the BDA on this matter for some time now, but they don't seem ready to share.

For me, the main problem is not that people don't value optimal picture and sound quality – I think they do. It's that they value convenience – and money - more. The overwhelming trend for media consumption is a move away from physical media and towards internet streaming.

With Netflix, for a monthly fee that's smaller than a Spotify subscription, you can watch a huge range of movies, TV shows, documentaries and music concerts on practically any device with a screen. You don't even need to know how fast your internet speed is or what resolution screen you're running - the service will simply adapt itself to give you the optimal stream for your setup.

That's the kind of experience people demand these days. And did I mention that Netflix is now streaming in 4K?

Compare that to a disc that can cost more than an entire month's Netflix subscription all on its own, which you have to find somewhere to put, and only works in a BD player plugged into a TV.

Yes, Blu-ray offers the pinnacle of picture and sound quality, but how does that help the huge percentage of people now choosing to watch movies on their phones, tablets and laptops? Ultraviolet and the like have been created tried to address that, but let's be honest - no one buys Blu-ray for Ultraviolet.

Ultimately, for 4K to find a home on Blu-ray, it has to be financially viable for the technology people and the content people. It doesn't look like it is for any of them, and it's painfully clear that the various jigsaw pieces needed to get 4K into the home is horribly out of sync anyway.

I really hope I'm wrong, but a 4K Blu-ray format now seems further away than ever.

• Why Netflix in Ultra HD will ruin TV forever

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Review: Elgato Thunderbolt Dock

Introduction

Most Macs sold since 2011 have at least one Thunderbolt port, yet many people use it only to connect an external display, ignoring the port's greater potential. Thunderbolt's versatility can be leveraged to add new features to a computer, even when that computer's design doesn't accommodate internal expansion cards.

The simplest examples of this are adaptors that turn a Thunderbolt port into an Ethernet or a FireWire port. But docking stations like this one from Elgato are more adventurous, providing multiple ports for you to connect various devices including storage, a printer, a display and more. This is especially convenient with a portable Mac because things can be reconnected whenever you return to your desk by simply plugging in one cable.

The dock works with desktop Macs too, and that makes it of special interest if you own a first-generation Thunderbolt Mac and lament its lack of USB 3.0 ports. It gives you three of them, thereby unlocking new options for fast external storage.

Bear in mind, though, that this doesn't mean you can use all kinds of USB 3.0 hardware with a Mac. Some video capture decks, for instance, come only with Windows software, so it's necessary to verify compatibility.

On the surface Elgato's line-up of ports isn't much different to earlier alternatives from Matrox and Belkin. The front panel contains one USB 3.0 port and discrete 3.5mm mini jacks for headphones and a microphone. This is a welcome change from Apple's annoying habit of putting useful connections out of sight and easy reach.

At the back are another two USB 3.0 ports, beating the quantity on Matrox's dock, which also has a total of three USB ports, but two of which are rated only for USB 2.0 transfer speeds. Belkin's dock has three ports of the more modern type. However, the ports on both of these alternatives are limited to 2.5GB/s, whereas Elgato rates its ports for USB 3.0's theoretical maximum of 5GB/s. Its ports also support UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol), which is capable of delivering improved transfer rates (something that will be covered later in this review).

The rear panel also contains a HDMI 1.4 port, which is able to drive a display with a resolution up to 2560x1600 pixels; a Gigabit Ethernet port, which most recent MacBooks lack; and two Thunderbolt ports. One Thunderbolt port connects the dock to your computer, while the second allows additional devices to be connected through the dock.

Alternatively, this extra Thunderbolt port can be used to connect a DVI or VGA display if you already have a Mini DisplayPort adaptor for that purpose. Or you can convert it to an increasingly niche FireWire 800 port with a different adaptor. Belkin's dock has FireWire built in.

Using one of these adaptors cuts off further expansion unless you ensure your other Thunderbolt devices have their own passthrough port, in which case you can daisy-chain those devices and connect the adaptor last in the chain.

Also omitted, and even more niche on the Mac, is eSATA. Another dock from Sonnet Technology promises to include two eSATA ports, but that product is yet to become available a year after its announcement.

The dock's mix of metallic and black panels is a good fit for Mac hardware, and it fits on the foot of an iMac's stand. But don't mistake its size as an indication of portability because the included power brick is required.

Performance

Earlier, we mentioned that the Elgato dock's USB ports are rated to 5GB/s, and that they support UASP. Making use of the latter requires that a connected device also supports that protocol. To test this I used a StarTech S2510BPU33 drive enclosure, into which I installed a Samsung 840 Evo SSD.

When I tested this drive with Macs that had a built-in, UASP-compliant USB 3.0 ports (a 2012 Mac mini and a 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display) it achieved peak transfer rates of 437.4MB/s when reading data, and 416.9MB/s when writing. The drive's median transfer rates held up well at 347.2MB/s and 364.5MB/second, respectively.

A different picture emerged when the drive was connected to the dock. In that configuration, the best 'read' speed the drive was able to reach was 351.2MB/s. Its peak 'write' speed suffered a much greater reduction to 272.6MB/second. Correspondingly, the median read, and write speeds were reduced to 292.1MB/s and 228.8MB/s.

To verify these results, I tested the drive on the dock's other two USB ports, which demonstrated no difference. The positive is that the drive stayed close to these peak transfer rates during our large file tests – the medians are dragged down when transferring small files, which we expected.

This limitation dents the dock's appeal as a way to increase the number of USB 3.0 ports on a Mac that's already equipped with USB 3.0. However, it is a better but more costly option than a USB 3.0 hub because Thunderbolt's greater bandwidth means less contention.

No software needs to be installed on a Mac to use the dock. Its USB ports and a connected display are instantly available, and its headphone and microphone ports become available as options in the Mac's Sound preferences pane.

It's worth visiting Elgato's website to get an optional download. It unlocks a high-power mode for the dock's USB ports, enabling them to charge more demanding devices. This means you can simultaneously charge two iPads with Retina display and an iPhone through the dock.

The download has extra value when used with a MacBook because it installs a utility into the menu bar, which enables you to eject all connected devices at once. The dock also works with Windows 8.1 after you download and install drivers for its USB and Ethernet ports.

It's important that you don't mistake the presence of a HDMI port and the ability to connect a Mini DisplayPort adaptor into the dock's second Thunderbolt port as a way to increase the number of displays that can be connected to your computer. A Thunderbolt port carries video and audio to a single display alongside data going to other devices. If you try to connect two displays to the dock, the one attached to the HDMI port is active and the other is ignored.

Verdict

Elgato's dock is certainly an appealing add-on for a MacBook. Its price tag is similar to other docks, but it's high enough to keep Thunderbolt docks in the realm of an indulgent convenience. Used with any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac that has only USB 2.0 ports, it offers an affordable way to get better transfer rates out of any USB 3.0 storage you've bought in the last few years.

Take care when buying, though, because the dock comes in two versions – with and without the cable for £180 and £190, respectively. A cable bought separately costs around £25. Note that the bundle sold through Apple's online store for the lower price includes the cable, so be savvy and shop around.

We liked

Although speeds from the USB ports falls below that of ports built into recent Macs, their overall performance isn't bad per se – write speeds on our SSD were most heavily affected, but read speeds were good.

The dock's 17.8cm by 8cm size means it doesn't take up much room, and its height of 2.5cm allows it to be comfortably tucked under an iMac. The Thunderbolt cable that's provided is the ideal length for positioning, and it's just long enough to keep a mess of cables away from a MacBook.

The software utility to eject connected drives is the icing on the cake when it comes to convenience for a MacBook. This is a feature that both Belkin and Matrox's docks lack, even though their marketing pitches them for the same purpose.

We disliked

USB transfer rates will be mildly disappointing if you were expecting the very best from the spec sheet's boast of 5GB/s and UASP support. Knowing the speed limitation of the USB 3.0 ports at least allows you to assess which devices will work adequately enough through the dock, and which you might want to always connect to your Mac to ensure they operate at their best. If you care about this, the dock's one-cable-to-connect appeal is slightly diminished.

The exclusion of FireWire isn't a major problem for most people as it can be added with an adaptor. However, doing so will require a rethink of your cabling if you currently connect a DVI or HDMI display to your Mac using a Mini DisplayPort adaptor.

Final verdict

Ultimately, Elgato's dock isn't much different to its rivals, except for promise of faster USB ports. It lives up to that, although to a more limited extent than you might like. It's the best-specced Thunderbolt dock to date; with add-on software that shows good thought has gone into how it will be used.

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