Sources Contact Advanced Search Tutorials

An Interest In:

Web News this Week

Search Archive

Some of Our Sources

View All Sources

Help Webnuz

Referal links:

October 18, 2019 07:30 pm

Facebook Portal Sales Are 'Very Low'

Facebook's Portal video-chat device -- which puts a camera and a sensitive microphone in your living room -- isn't flying off the shelves, Fast Company reported Friday, citing supply-chain sources and store sales reps. From the report: The device, which launched a little over a year ago, has been plagued by the privacy concerns of would-be buyers from the start. And Creative Strategies analyst Ben Bajarin tells Fast Company that his sources at the companies that supply parts for the Portal say that shipments of the devices are "very low." "The orders for the components were not high to begin with, and the build volumes were low," Bajarin says. "They [Facebook] never meant to build up a large inventory." Bajarin says the Portal is selling in the "hundreds of thousands" per year range, not in the millions. Rakuten, which tracks online device sales, says Portal accounts for 0.6% of units sold in the overall smart-speaker category, and 3.9% of smart speakers with screens (such as Amazon's Echo Show and Google Home). Anecdotal accounts seem to echo Bajarin's sources. A sales rep at a Best Buy store in midtown Manhattan said they'd sold "hardly any" of the Portals at all. And a rep at the main San Francisco store said the devices sold reasonably well when they launched last year but have slowed since then.

Slashdot

Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..

More About this Source Visit Slashdot