GPX 6000 - How Do Others Compete?

[Northeast]

2 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

Now I have to go ask the one who wears the pants in the house for permission.

That process commenced yesterday for me  ?

[Gold Catcher]

16 minutes ago, Northeast said:

That process commenced yesterday for me  ?

I am in negotiations as well. I might have to cough up the same amount for my other half to keep the peace...

[mungass]

37 minutes ago, Northeast said:

That process commenced yesterday for me  ?

Sold my Harley months ago on speculation ?. Have already rung it in to Nenad  at Phase Technical to put me on his buy one list ??????? 

will have to find enough gold to buy another bike ????

[Gold Catcher]

3 minutes ago, Minerjosh said:

and my other half gets flowers haha

I wish it would be that easy for me....

[jrbeatty]

4 hours ago, jasong said:

I don't know much about it either. Which to me demonstrates one of their weak points as a company in terms of being able to take on a major detecting company.

Outside of forums, in the US, I doubt many have even heard of it. In the Middle East/Africa where the market for such a machine seems to be ripe, I wonder how many know a lot about it?

Point being, seems to me they have more hurdles than just keeping up with ML tech. But again, I know nothing about them except that I know nothing, which itself seems to be a problem they need to solve in a general sense among potential customers.

The QED has a niche market. Since it has been designed, manufactured and until recently distributed by one man (Howard Rocky) It's clearly not in direct competition with any other company. 

It draws on no Minelab patents, but utilises patents (expired and under license) from some of the PI detector pioneers. This makes it more of a parallel development.

"A single channel Pulse Induction metal detector using a differential integrator as the null summation / averaging means to null the ground and static magnetic fields. The Ground Balance method is based on the published papers or lapsed patents of the early pioneers Eric Foster, Poole, Chapman and Howells and more recently the lapsed patent of Dr. George Paltoglou and Australian Innovation Patent AU2010101019. The front-end blocking circuitry is US Patent No.: 10,181,720 B1, dated 15 Jan 2019 by Dave Emery and is used under license. Click here to read the Dave Emery Patent. Average current consumption 400mA, voltage limits 6v min to 10v max. Audio PWM VCO & VCA. Digitization method Bipolar Integrating (200uS) ADC Display, 3 digit LED Backlit Transflective LCD EMI Compliance # E5498"

[goldenoldie]

5 hours ago, Northeast said:

That process commenced yesterday for me  ?

I expect the reason why you are now selling your QED towards purchasing a 6000. 

[Northeast]

10 minutes ago, goldenoldie said:

I expect the reason why you are now selling your QED towards purchasing a 6000. 

Correct.  Going to be some gold getting sold too.  

Going to see the Doc this afternoon, might check if I actually need both of these pesky kidneys too  ?

[jasong]

2 hours ago, jrbeatty said:

It's clearly not in direct competition with any other company. 

If that's the case then I don't know that we have any companies even trying to compete with Minelab then. When it comes to gold machines anyways.

The ATX, the Impulse? What current ML product would those even be competing with?

I believe there are places a smartly run company could tactically take market share, especially with patents like the 4500 on the chopping block soon. It wouldn't be in the flagship product range though. Such a smartly run company might find some opportunity to tackle larger projects eventually.

[Aureous]

35 minutes ago, jasong said:

If that's the case then I don't know that we have any companies even trying to compete with Minelab then. When it comes to gold machines anyways.

The ATX, the Impulse? What current ML product would those even be competing with?

I believe there are places a smartly run company could tactically take market share, especially with patents like the 4500 on the chopping block soon. It wouldn't be in the flagship product range though. Such a smartly run company might find some opportunity to tackle larger projects eventually.

The only REAL competition is with themselves and time. Once the market appears saturated for any particular niche, sales begin to wither and they then know, its time to release the next bit of technical improvement to bolster sales once again. ML are always 3-5 years ahead of themselves in either theory, bench-concept or field prototype. The massive profit margins they reap (always 70%+)  allow big R&D expenditure to 'reach into the future' and slay any potential rival. Only Garrett and Nokta appear capable of building anything that would even come close to some of ML's product range. The ATX, Impulse and QED are currently the only gold machines (with further modifications) within screaming distance of ML's products. But, once the 6000 is released, a new GPZ and maybe an updated SDC in coming years, the catch-up race is even further stretched.

Plus, the patents issue is always strenuously pursued by ML....their ground tracking and MPS (multi-channel PI) patents are ancient and yet still enforced at great cost....again, to throttle potential competition. Not sure how long this can last (legally) but you can bet that ML will try.