Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Electricity and Sushi

Storage is what takes place between availability and demand. And creativity is what is necessary before availability, usually--but not always--stimulated by demand.

10 years before the iPod, the portable media player business--portable music storage--totaled 715 million dollars a year. After the iPod it was $34 billion.

The global electricity market is a $2 trillion business, over 100 times the size of the music industry, yet Apple sells 25X more music storage than every battery manufacturer combined sells grid storage. The electrical market is the largest supply chain in the world and has very little storage capacity. According to Eos, a storage company, "Even sushi, which like electricity basically needs to be consumed as soon as it is produced, has storage in its supply chain."

The energy storage market in 2010 was 1.1 billion dollars. Piper Jaffray estimates the market at 600 billion. Why the difference? The same as the portable media storage business: A great need unfilled by the right product at the right price.

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