BUD (ASX) Ann: Acquisition of LIFX and Share Placement

Originally posted by techfacts: ↑

There is one thing that bothers me the most and I have been trying to work this out, without success. ROI for a house full of smart bulbs, any smart bulb. Given the average house has about 30 light bulbs, this is close to $2k outlay for the bulbs plus running costs.

Lets say I buy 10 x $69 smart bulbs = $690 Vs 10 normal energy efficient light bulbs @ $10 each = $100.

I can buy about 60 energy efficient lighbulbs for the cost of 10 smart light bulbs.

Questions
1. How many hours do I get out of a energy efficient light bulb Vs a smart lightbulb
2. How much does it cost to run a energy efficient light bulb Vs a smart bulb
3. What are the cost saving comparisons for these bulbs
4. Is there enough life in a smart bulb to give me a ROI before I have to replace it, given a smart bulbs costs 10x a normal bulb is the life of a smart bulb 10x longer or 15x longer?
5. What happens to these numbers once the market is flooded with these smart bulbs and the price drops and margins vanish?
6. If I cant save money using smart bulbs before they have to be replaced then they will be a gimmick.

Talking about been able to turn lights off from smart phone or dim lights, I can my a $10 timer from Woolies that will do this. Smart home equipment from the likes of Nest offer not only light management but management of a lot of home appliances, how does this compare to the single smart lightbulb and benefits, are Nest and other smart home companies competitors to Lifx?

It would great of Lifx or BUD management could publish a paper outlining the benefits and costs savings so we could better understand the long term business model. It has taken solar 10s of years to get established for the same reasons as above. Until the costs dropped enough for a reasonable ROI to be achieved for a house owner.

Surely BUD management ran an analysis along these lines to work out if smart bulbs were a gimmick or not.

I am not leaning either way, would just like to know. DYOR

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Nobody is claiming that smart bulbs will be 100% of the market.

Philips has sold more than one billion LED bulbs. Philips does not release numbers of smart bulbs sold, but it appears to be 1% to 2% of their total LED's.

Lifx has sold 1.8 million smart bulbs, that is less than 0.18% of Philips LED total.