How much do you think would be a reasonable market price for a teleportation device - one that could be carried anywhere?
Say this device can only teleport one person - the owner - and never anyone else. A family of four people needs four teleporters, not one. The device cannot be used to commit crime (i.e., bank robberies) or enter classified/military areas.
Financial benefits: The owner would never need a car again. Never need to buy an airplane ticket. Never need to buy gasoline, car insurance, etc. Could travel to all 194(?) countries in the world. Could teleport himself to the Taj Mahal, the top of Mount Everest, etc. Could get a job in a high-paying city (i.e., NYC) while living in, say, cheap rural Montana, thus saving money (teleport to job commute!) He would save hours each week by not driving, adding up to weeks of extra free time per year.
$500,000 per teleporter? $1 million?
What are the warranty terms? Sure, $1 million sounds like a deal, but what if you end up spending 250 grand a year on maintenance? And how reliable is this thing anyway?
What is your intent for marketing such a device? If it is to make money, price it $200Million or so above manufacturing cost (assuming you have a lock on the manufacture). You won’t sell many, but you won’t need to. You’d be able to sell at least one (and probably several thousand), and the fact that only the ultra rich can afford them will make them more desirable to the ultra rich.
If your intent is to improve the life of the common man, it would depend on what the manufacturing cost is. For example, if it is $20Million per unit, you probably should still sell them for $200Million, since not many people will be able to afford one, and you could do a lot of philanthropy with the money you’d rake in.
If, on the other hand, they cost $200,000 to produce, you could probably work on a 30% margin (sell them for $300,000 each) and produce enough income to be sure you could stay in business. At $300,000, not everybody will be able to afford one, but most of the upper middle-class could. Below a 30% margin, it would be iffy if you could stay in business.
It depends on the individual. For me, probably in at around $50,000. For a CEO of a major corporation, maybe $20+ million. For the minimum wage worker struggling to make ends meet, maybe $1000.
Yeah, if we’re talking about consumers only, then it’s a classic downward sloping demand curve. The only question is what number to put on the axis. Since CEOs are already willing to spend millions (annually) on jets and helicopters, the upper price is certainly in the millions. Since most people don’t have millions no matter how much they want one, the lower price is certainly in the thousands. It’s probably a lot higher than $1000 just because most workers still own cars and even used cars tend to run multiple thousands.
But the actual market price is going to depend a lot on cost to produce. A patent will only allow a monopolistic price to be established for a relatively short time. Even in a monopoly scenario, the most profitable pricing method for a cheap-to-produce teleporter would be to set the price high and offer subsidies and/or financing to make it easier for lower-income types to buy. So you sell to CEOs at 10 million, but offer a “single mom discount” and a “military vet discount.”
Another strategy would be to allow poorer people to use them to/from terminals like public transportation… then get the government to pay $10 million for each one. Let the government figure out how to subsidize fare prices. Frame it as a global warming issue to make sure the government doesn’t run a real cost/benefit analysis.
Everyone on the planet that could afford one would buy one. If you priced it at $1B a piece you’d sell a couple hundred. If you priced it at $1 you’d sell a couple billion.
Assuming minimal maintenance costs, chance of death, etc.
It would be a financial nightmare for so many corporations you would be assassinated before it ever got to market, unfortunately. If you want this to see the light of day and still make some money, I would suggest info-bombing the plans all over the internet and all media outlets at the same time to prevent suppression, signing your name to everything released, then living off of the publicity.
Any technology goes through a process where products become simplified and cheaper to manufacture. CD players retailed for $1100 or so when they first came out. Now they go for about $9.95. The first cell phones were carried in a bag and cost around $4500, IIRC. Now you can carry them in your pocket and wireless companies give them away. Top of the line iPhones cost $700 but you can buy a decent Android phone for about $50. I predict if teleportation machines get to the point where they become portable and mass-produced, then $150 or $200 might be a price point for the average consumer.
It’s not that great a deal as most people would be priced out of owning one.
Certainly a cost comparable to owning a high-end automobile would be reasonable.
Depending on how expensive it is to mass produce, it may be worthwhile to price it much lower for mass consumption.
Maybe the low-cost ones have a greater chance of accidently combining your DNA with a fly’s or teleporting you into the floor?
I wonder how mass teleportation would work in practice. Like what happens when a million tourists show up to the Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty at the same time?
Not necessarily. If the technology is sufficiently unique/advanced, it will be harder to reverse engineer and easier to protect through patent law.
Also, the OP doesn’t specify whether any kind of support network is involved. Building a knock-off cell phone is pretty easy; maintaining a network of cell towers to make it useful is something altogether different.
You can’t figure out a market price without knowing both supply and demand. Demand would be huge. But how much did this teleporter cost to build, and how many are there?
