RE:
They (Nokia) are a shadow of who they were once, and the whole situation was one hot mess in a dumpster fire in a train wreck, I really don't believe there was any masterful exit other than a firesale. Anywho, my point was complacency and thinking you are untouchable. Peace!
That firesale succeeded to gain them a pretty hefty sum of money though. The one with the real damage was Microsoft. The acquisition was wildly controversial within Micorosoft and for a good reason, only a few years later it wrote off the entire money it dumped into the acquisition.
Nokia can be hardly described as a mere shadow with and EBITDA which is pretty much the same as in 2009. Operating income is indeed lower nowadays, about half of what it was in 2009 (at least according to numbers from Macrotrends.com). That is a consolidation indeed but hardly what I would call a shadow of itself.
It was only 2-3 years where Nokia really fell into a profitibility hole. The time was tumultous no question but after all they had to transition away from their former core business, given that, this was a fairly successful transition.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
There will certainly be a niche market for Prusa.
I agree, especially because Prusa's target audience differs from Bambu's quite a lot. Bambu is a Mac, Prusa is an Ubuntu box - and just as with the operating systems, there are users who decide on their platform for reasons that go deeper than a specific feature set. The companies embody totally different concepts, and I am not even sure that they are, at the core, competing in the same space.
RE:
To stay within your analogy, If Bambulab is a Mac and Prusa is an Ubuntu, Vorons are some hardcore tinkerer Linux distribution. Both Bambulab and Vorons compete with Prusa, but at different ends of the spectrum. At least historically Prusa did have the ambition of offering plug and print printers for beginners as well as open source printers the DIY community can rig and mod to oblivion just as well.
The space is getting harder for Prusa but I do see a good case for it in the area of people who don't want to get super deep into printer modding or building but do want an open system where they could do the one or the other thing easily. Or simply a beginner friendly entry into the "the 3d printer is the hobby" hobby, less intimitating for interested beginners than a Voron for example.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
To stay within your analogy, If Bambulab is a Mac and Prusa is an Ubuntu, Vorons are some hardcore tinkerer Linux distribution. Both Bambulab and Vorons compete with Prusa, but at different ends of the spectrum. At least historically Prusa did have the ambition of offering plug and print printers for beginners as well as open source printers the DIY community can rig and mod to oblivion just as well.
The space is getting harder for Prusa but I do see a good case for it in the area of people who don't want to get super deep into printer modding or building but do want an open system where they could do the one or the other thing easily. Or simply a beginner friendly entry into the "the 3d printer is the hobby" hobby, less intimitating for interested beginners than a Voron for example.
Prusa will remain a top product because of the entire environment: top-notch firmware, support, forum, upgradability, printables, and a great slicer. Bambu is good and may one day be there, but NOT YET.
--------------------
Chuck H
3D Printer Review Blog
RE:
grin.. there is absolutely nothing to base that on. You are thinking of life pre-Bambu .. All the support/forum/printables stuff is dependent on profits from sales and that was all based on their historic sales model of a top-functioning product with good reliability and repairability .. mostly from the MK3 line. They were the top performing home market printer. That is no longer true. Their networking/connectivity components are very sub-par standard in their new line. They are making it work by compressing GCode, just to make it look viable; but there are still many problems with their TCP stack. They lack the distribution presence of Bambu in North America and competitive pricing. In Canada their filament is $52 to $62 where Bambu is $21 per refill. They have no local distribution spot, while Bambu set that up overnight here. Institutions here that were considering Prusa went with Bambu because of all the early problems with the MK4 (slow network, unusable wifi, availability, no input shaping), and so that has to have an effect on Prusa long-range.. Who can tell if Prusa will be able to 'pivot' to maintain the prestige they held, but it sure isn't a certainty. They will certainly need a cultural shift in some aspects of their engineering processes and design. And they will need to prove that down the road .. "NOT YET"..
Prusa will remain a top product because of the entire environment: top-notch firmware, support, forum, upgradability, printables, and a great slicer. Bambu is good and may one day be there, but NOT YET.
RE:
Well, I'd still call Prusa a top product, but it depends on the requirements. It's neither for those for whome money is the decision driver nor for those who are basically looking for a carefree appliance. If having an open source product is important for you and you like the tinkering part of the hobby, Prusa remains a very good choice.
What we currently see is a market that's becoming mature enough to diversify into segments for enthusiasts and users. Trust me, at some point we'll also see the "pointless luxury" variant where Bambu (or a similar vendor) partners up with Swarovski and sells a crystal-encrusted printer from last year for the price of a small house. Prusa would only get in real trouble if they tried to compete with the appliance or luxury models, which doesn't seem to be what the company is planning to do.
As far as distribution goes... The world doesn't only consist of North America and Asia. Ordering from Prusa in the EU is painless, fast and not too expensive, so I can see why Prusa focuses on that market instead of going to the dangerous process of international diversification. They won't become world leaders like that, but being a popular brand for enthusiasts in Europe is certainly something that can sustain a company of that size.
RE:
In Canada their filament is $52 to $62 where Bambu is $21 per refill.
Yes, in North America their filaments are not competitive due to logistics. I don't really get it why they did not use Printed Solid to establish a logistics presence in the US. But in Europe their filaments are perfectly competitive with Bambulab. Bambulab ASA costs 32 EUR/kg. The Prusament ASA costs 33.5 EUR/kg if you have a 5% rebate (which you have if you own a Mk3 as far as I know). The Bambulab PLA isn't much cheaper, 30 EUR/kg. Prusament PLA with -5% rebate is 28.5 EUR/kg.
Yes there is the Bambulab Membership program which slashes filament prices but the free phase is pretty timelimited and afterwards it is rather expensive.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
PS: I could imagine that they aren't really trying to be competitive in the US with filaments because they have scaling issues with their filaments business too. In other words, they can sell already more than they can handle even with the current situation (at least judging by how often the PC-Blend line is out of stock). So getting even more orders is not the priority right now.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
PS: I could imagine that they aren't really trying to be competitive in the US with filaments because they have scaling issues with their filaments business too. In other words, they can sell already more than they can handle even with the current situation (at least judging by how often the PC-Blend line is out of stock). So getting even more orders is not the priority right now.
I agree. I have "in stock alerts" for half of the Prusament PETG stuff because Prusa sells it faster than I can order what I need. 😀
RE:
Very interesting discussion - but are you all sure Bambu can keep up the pace? Do we know that they are making money, is their funding secure in the long run - I don't know. Since I like open source, I'm going with Linux and Prusa. Competition in this area will not be our disadvantage.
Best regards, Clemens
Mini, i3 MK2.5S, i3 MK4, CClone (Eigenbau)
RE:
are you all sure Bambu can keep up the pace? Do we know that they are making money, is their funding secure in the long run
This is a little bit of a rhetorical question because we have no idea about Prusa's finances, either.
We can only look at track records: Prusa has been able to get enough capital to grow to where they are, and so has Bambu. We don't know the debt/equity structure of either company. We do know that Bambu's senior management ALL came from DJI, which remains in business and therefore is likely financially a success and a reliable indicator of the team's abilities. We also know that Bambu has seemingly scaled their manufacturing and distribution without outwardly visible speed bumps.
I, personally, don't care one iota about open source or closed source. The whole open source argument makes no sense to me because Open Source has (for the most part) not demonstrated that it can bring greater reliability or economy over private enterprise. As a consumer I just care about getting the best value product.
I am not a part of the 3D printing religion. For me it is a tool to build things, not much more special than a computer or a saw or hammer. So if Bambu has the better product for my needs I'll buy their tool. Generally I stick with the same brand as long as it serves me, which is why I have purchased Prusa printers to date, and with my crappy XL experience why I am now contemplating switching to Bambu. For mainstream (non exotic) printing, the Bambu seems to be the generally better choice: better quality, better value, better quality. Next year, who knows?
If Prusa wakes up (they have been asleep/lethargic over the past several years) they stand a great chance of remaining a major player in 3D printing. Momentum is worth a lot.
RE:
One additional note:
I think Bambu is an exceptional competitor to Prusa. Prusa has many competitors, such as Creality. But Bambu is fundamentally different. This is why discussing them vs Prusa is interesting.
Until Bambu, companies like Prusa offered very little actual innovation and advancement was slow. All of the machines were copies of copies of copies of each other. Beyond the fact that there are two main FDM designs (bed slinger and CoreXY) the machines worked and looked the same.
It is clear that as Bambu was forming, they sat down and created a prioritized checklist of consumer desires and pain points. Bambu saw that 3D Printing was a large market that was being poorly served, even by leaders such as Prusa.
Bambu's products are not all things to all people. But they are all things for most people. They seem to have all of the features consumers want, plus are (apparently) reliable, print higher quality, and offer greater value. This is: Bambu is consumer focused, and driven by carving out the main market opportunity. Steve Jobs of Apple made a remark that success is not only what you put into a product but also what you choose not to put in.
Bambu's machine was also designed from the ground up to be manufactured using mass production methodologies. (Have you seen the videos of their factory...extensive use of robots for materials handling, automated testing systems, and traditional Chinese quality control.) So Bambu likely has a cost advantage over Prusa and is likely to have consistent quality that doesn't depend upon the attention of a kid with a screwdriver assembling their printers as a side hustle.
In contrast, Prusa seems to have nobody skilled in industrial engineering designing their products. When my XL arrived I was just shocked by the sheer complexity of the device. Even the sheetmetal work is crude: it has unnecessary folds, excessive and unnecessary parts, and lacks the typical stampings that would be pressed into sheet metal to add rigidity. It's a "home-brew" device that hasn't been designed with manufacturability from the start. From little things like a lack of lock-tite on metal-to-metal screws to sloppy clearances, the XL looks like it was just a bunch of afterthoughts added on top of one another.
RE:
It is perfectly fine for you to not care about open source. Bambulab has very convincing offers and is almost single handedly to thank for breaking up the technological stagnation and race to the bottom dynamics in much of the market (a race Prusa never joined). They brought real innovation really sent shockwaves especially through Ender et al which are selling basically the same printer or some variations which bring few advantages to the market for years now. Suddenly they had to at least follow Bambulab to not loose touch with where the market is moving entirely.
Yet, when people talk about Open Source it is not only about the principles of it but rather about having the security that things stay accessible even beyond the existence of a certain company and independently from the decisions of an individual company. If you buy a Bambulab you basically have to trust the company that it is not doing anything anti-consumer in the mid-term. With a Prusa printer you do not actually have to rely on that, if Prusa went rogue, the printers are so open one could easily get around anything with relatively modest effort.
And that is the point pretty much. It is not certain that Bambulab will stay so nice, once they have secured a strong brand and sufficient market share. They already introduced a lot of technology in a harmless form which can be turned quite evil, with relatively little effort. They might never do so but if they do, it is much harder to compensate for that without selling the printer altogether.
That has nothing to do with being part of a religion (an accusation which is rather insulting in my opinion). It has to do with the question how futureproof a tool is. A 3d printer is after all a complex tool, it's not just a fancy hammer. It is a tool were cybersecurity is a topic and I am not sure everyone is convinced about the Bambulab approach there. For quite some customers cybersecurity is actually absolutely essential, non-negotiable, trumping everything else.
The "next year who knows" is exactly the point. Unless you consider 3d printer throw away tools with a shelf life of less than a year. Which would be a bit unsustainable but again, everyone should use 3d printers the way they have use for them, as long as its in a legal way.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
nothing to do with being part of a religion (an accusation which is rather insulting in my opinion).
In technology, "religion" is a term used to describe a strong and compelling belief in something based on faith, not on demonstrable fact.
3D printers are a disposable tool. After a few years, I dispose of the old ones and buy current ones. During their lifetime they need to be serviced. Prusa and Bambu both sell repair parts. If parts availability became an issue, an aftermarket would emerge or else I would cannibalize a machine for parts like the Air Force does.
I fully admit that for some people, Open Source offers an emotional comfort. I call these persons "change-your-own-oil" (on your car) people and they can do that. For me, I just want to get the job done. I pay others to change my oil and I have never thought to ask how they do it.
My point is that Prusa certainly caters to the audience where the printer is the hobby. But Bambu caters to the much larger audience where my 7 year old grandson wants to design and make things, and he has no interest in the 3D printer itself.
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
“Open Source” can’t be an argument to indicate consumer value in a company’s products. If that’s a defense of lack of innovation and engineering for the last 5 years they are doomed. Look at the wifi issue.. surely the MK4 and XL were designed with no WiFi. You can’t say adding a $2 wifi module with very poor performance was anything but an “eleventh hour” addition.. and those never go well (as they are seeing now). Virtually nothing we purchase is open source. Cars, appliances, computers. I’ve taught cert level courses in Linux / Windows / MacOS to tech savvy students, and still Linux comes out as the least popular. There might be a very niche market to stay open source, but with their new extruder and XL tool changers, likely at least some of that is customized for them. For Bambu, someone manufacturers their parts .. they will continue to do so even if Bambu disappears as there will be a market for them. And as good engineering practices go, your last resort is to single source a custom part for your proprietary product. That is one manufacturing tenet to ensure one part doesn’t stop your whole production line. So while people will use the argument that the closed source of Bambu means that parts won’t be available if they disappear .. they have no idea whether that will be true.. and likely won’t.
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
Superbly stated.
RE:
nothing to do with being part of a religion (an accusation which is rather insulting in my opinion).
In technology, "religion" is a term used to describe a strong and compelling belief in something based on faith, not on demonstrable fact.
3D printers are a disposable tool. After a few years, I dispose of the old ones and buy current ones. During their lifetime they need to be serviced. Prusa and Bambu both sell repair parts. If parts availability became an issue, an aftermarket would emerge or else I would cannibalize a machine for parts like the Air Force does.
I fully admit that for some people, Open Source offers an emotional comfort. I call these persons "change-your-own-oil" (on your car) people and they can do that. For me, I just want to get the job done. I pay others to change my oil and I have never thought to ask how they do it.
My point is that Prusa certainly caters to the audience where the printer is the hobby. But Bambu caters to the much larger audience where my 7 year old grandson wants to design and make things, and he has no interest in the 3D printer itself.
Are you implying I am basing my comments above on faith rather than arguments? 3d printers are not disposables but they of course depreciate and need regular service. Like you said, you want to use it for years not for a year or less. So for some at least it is not faith but a rational argument how reliable that is. Are most of the heavily serviced parts standard components which one can basically get anywhere or not.
Sure its not all black and white, also with certain replacement parts for the Bambulab a third party environment has developed. But it has yet to be seen if they will draw the ire of Bambulab in the near or mid term. At the same time Prusa is moving a bit away from the everything is open approach. Yes, not everything is black and white.
Of course you can also cannibalize etc but lets not pretend that this is the same quality of reliability and future proofness or shall we?
I personally don't care about the "emotional comfort" of Open Source. Yes, for people who want the 3d printer as pure consumer electronics and if it is broken it is sent in to repair, Bambulab is the option. That is a good argument. Prusa isn't really offering much there.
I am not saying here you need to see priorities the same way I or the random next guy do. I am just pointing out, why rationally acting people can draw certain conclusions for good reasons and not merely because they are faith driven fanboys.
With all due respect, neither Bambulab nor Prusa cater to 7 year old children. Those should only be let near any of these machines under adult supervision and there it really doesn't matter if you use a plug and print machine that has the label Prusa on it or a plug and print machine with the name Bambulab. I also doubt speed is crucial for that "target group" either.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE:
“Open Source” can’t be an argument to indicate consumer value in a company’s products. If that’s a defense of lack of innovation and engineering for the last 5 years they are doomed. Look at the wifi issue.. surely the MK4 and XL were designed with no WiFi. You can’t say adding a $2 wifi module with very poor performance was anything but an “eleventh hour” addition.. and those never go well (as they are seeing now). Virtually nothing we purchase is open source. Cars, appliances, computers. I’ve taught cert level courses in Linux / Windows / MacOS to tech savvy students, and still Linux comes out as the least popular. There might be a very niche market to stay open source, but with their new extruder and XL tool changers, likely at least some of that is customized for them. For Bambu, someone manufacturers their parts .. they will continue to do so even if Bambu disappears as there will be a market for them. And as good engineering practices go, your last resort is to single source a custom part for your proprietary product. That is one manufacturing tenet to ensure one part doesn’t stop your whole production line. So while people will use the argument that the closed source of Bambu means that parts won’t be available if they disappear .. they have no idea whether that will be true.. and likely won’t.
If Bambu is perishing, maybe but what if Bambu chooses a little less friendly policy once their market position is strong enough? What if they are closing down their system retroactively? Maybe you can prevent that by refusing future firmware updates but maybe even that is not an option (I honestly don't know enough about the updating on Bambulab machines, if there is any automatism to it) but in any case that would have serious drawbacks. Alternatively we can trust that Bambulab has established an RFID chip system just for harmless reasons, for user experience etc. Maybe that is indeed the explanation but its not unreasonable to consider the chance that it isn't. For many if not most that is an acceptable risk, given the compelling offer today, for some it isn't. But like I said, the one argument that is really strong for some customers is cybersecurity. For them Bambulab machines might be simply not an option.
And yes we are talking here about risks, no one has a glass ball to look into the future. But risk assessment is a thing and not some faith based dice rolling.
Btw, one argument has not even been mentioned here yet and that is noise. For me personally a Bambulab is not an option because of the noise factor. I think Bambulab has also identified this as a major issue already, one of their strongest weaknesses (some don't care or don't need to care but there is a market segment they are loosing because of it). It is no accident that they are starting to address the issue themselves already to some extend with the A1 Mini. I like that they are also using innovative ideas again for it but they are still not there. They need to address the other main sources. I wouldn't be surprised if they will, in the next generation of printers.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
“Open Source” can’t be an argument to indicate consumer value in a company’s products. If that’s a defense of lack of innovation and engineering for the last 5 years they are doomed. Look at the wifi issue.. If Bambu is perishing, maybe but what if Bambu chooses a little less friendly policy once their market position is strong enough? What if they are closing down their system retroactively? Maybe you can prevent that by refusing future firmware updates but maybe even that is not an option (I honestly don't know enough about the updating on Bambulab machines, if there is any automatism to it) but in any case that would have serious drawbacks. Alternatively we can trust that Bambulab has established an RFID chip system just for harmless reasons, for user experience etc. Maybe that is indeed the explanation but its not unreasonable to consider the chance that it isn't. For many if not most that is an acceptable risk, given the compelling offer today, for some it isn't. But like I said, the one argument that is really strong for some customers is cybersecurity. For them Bambulab machines might be simply not an option.
Didn't you see, for just a bit over $1000, you can have a "securable" X1 by buying the X1E with Ethernet (ok, you get a heated chamber and air filter as well). Which makes you wonder, I guess $1000 is the price for being able to wholly avoid Bambu Labs' cloud service...
RE: A strategic view of Bambu & Prusa (including benchmarks of all flagship models)
^^ No that's the first time I hear of the X1E. Bambulab is churning their printers out faster than I can read it seems 😉
Yes that product does seem to address the cybersecurity issue from what I can see. Would be cool to see some informed review on it, if it is really as cast iron as they claim phyiscally killing wifi connection and also how well it works in rea life application (if everythin functions well and stable, but given their track record so far I would assume that it does).
One has to give it to Bambulab that they are incredibly efficient in identifying their own key weaknesses which cost them considerable market share and address them at breakneck speed.
Mk3s MMU2s, Voron 0.1, Voron 2.4