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We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

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Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#131

Post by ethanpil »

adultSwim wrote: post #124
ethanpil wrote: post #111

Whats your plan on competing with China copycats, who are no doubt already working on a lower cost clone of your product? Since its such a great idea, but uses mostly off the shelf parts and doesn't require much specialization, its a perfect target for them. Look at the patterns: They quickly cannibalize and eventually completely commoditize the market for easy-to-copy products by flooding ebay, amazon, aliexpress, e…

Great question. The copycats will be agile (quick to market, quick to iterate through changes) but I imagine their software side would be lacking. Should Andromium be more afraid of Samsung/HTC/etc? Xiaomi? (in between a generic copycat and a Samsung) With so much data being pushed off devices and onto 3rd parties, I wonder if the real competition is Apple and Google?

But they don't need software. You are doing that work for them by giving away your core platform for free. I would imagine that if you change that now your userbase would likely rebel and/or clone/fork your software. Do you plan on hardware locking Andromium?

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#132

Post by type0 »

a3_nm wrote: post #117
ajiang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Final question: Closed source right now. Having spoken to some early Mozilla employees, considering open source. Full list of permissions can be found on the app page: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andromium.... There a ton of permissions we ask for in order to make the experience smooth. To be honest, we've been focusing less on privacy and more on just making a solid desktop experience. We can d…

Please open source the app so that it can be hacked by users and distributed outside of the official channels. I avoid running proprietary software on my phone, in particular I do not have Google Play, so the superbook looks a lot less interesting to me if it requires a closed source app to work smoothly.

I agree on that it needs to be open sourced, I would buy superbook but can't think of using proprietary software. If I could install it via F-droid that would be nice.

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#133

Post by ajiang »

ethanpil wrote: post #111

Whats your plan on competing with China copycats, who are no doubt already working on a lower cost clone of your product? Since its such a great idea, but uses mostly off the shelf parts and doesn't require much specialization, its a perfect target for them. Look at the patterns: They quickly cannibalize and eventually completely commoditize the market for easy-to-copy products by flooding ebay, amazon, aliexpress, e…

Oh man, passed out (it's like 5 AM here in Shanghai). Great question.

The hardware for the Superbook isn't hard, to be perfectly honest. We actually fully expect that we'll have copy cats, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about that. We are at heart a software company, and if you look at the various attempts at doing this, getting the software experience right has been the challenging part. One of the reasons why we price the item low is so that we can get it out to as many individuals as possible. By building up a large user base, we can build the only thing that's defensible here - a great software experience with a sophisticated developer network, building software for the Andromium experience. In fact, we'd actually be pretty happy if someone else built and sold the hardware - and really just got it out there. We can build a big enough business on the software side, owning the home screen for the desktop environment.

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#134

Post by ajiang »

ethanpil wrote: post #131
adultSwim wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. The copycats will be agile (quick to market, quick to iterate through changes) but I imagine their software side would be lacking. Should Andromium be more afraid of Samsung/HTC/etc? Xiaomi? (in between a generic copycat and a Samsung) With so much data being pushed off devices and onto 3rd parties, I wonder if the real competition is Apple and Google?

But they don't need software. You are doing that work for them by giving away your core platform for free. I would imagine that if you change that now your userbase would likely rebel and/or clone/fork your software. Do you plan on hardware locking Andromium?

Hardware locking is an option, but to be perfectly honest, we can be a lot more creative than that: - Freemium tier pricing - Software licensing for enterprise (security features) - 'Preloading' apps - Direct app integration into desktop features

Given how critical the software experience is (and by the way how difficult building an OS experience inside of another OS is), I wouldn't be too quick to assume people jump to whatever is free.

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#135

Post by robocat »

_qbjt wrote: post #129
kylorhall wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the FAQ, a bit hidden.. -- Here's a list of features that have been requested of us that we WON'T be considering for our Kickstarter model (but maybe in the future): - Audio speakers (trust us, the ones on your phone are much better than any speaker we could source affordably)

Ah, that's too bad but I guess it makes sense. Would buy a "pro" version of this if it had a built in low latency audio interface or even just a DAC. I'm not sure if the Android APIs support such a thing, however.

A Bluetooth speaker is a fine compromise.

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#136

Post by [deleted] »

thanatropism wrote: post #128
ajiang wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea totally. I'm actually on board with this. If you're trying to turn a tablet or laptop into an Android laptop, use Remix. We aren't trying to do that - we believe that device convergence (a world where they only computer you'll have / rely on is your smartphone) will happen and will happen on Android.

I have to tell you 'Yea totally' is probably a better name for your company than 'Andromium', which sounds like fake ``natural'' Viagra.

[deleted]

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#137

Post by ajiang »

benologist wrote: post #106
ajiang wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! We want to. Please reach out to us Atom guys. We're working with some friends working on a cloud IDE, but this is an area where we admit theres a gap in software. We intend to close this gap.

Have you looked into wine / crossover? They already have the Windows version of Steam and playable games running on x86 android.

Oh interesting, looking into WINE some more.

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#139

Post by type0 »

ajiang wrote: post #85
irq-1 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool! Have you considered embedding a Raspberry Pi Zero so the Superbook can get on the web when there's not a phone attached? I know that's like reinventing the Chromebook, but the CPU and memory are so cheap...

It is really cool, but for our vision, it is just a neat feature. We want to empower device convergence, so that Android smartphone can be leveraged as laptops for learning and productivity use :)

> It is really cool, but for our vision, it is just a neat feature.

If you release it for Raspberry Pi, you could get a lot of exposure on techy blogs, that's essentially free advertisement to reach many more core customers, I think you're underestimating what level of goodwill it might bring.

Re: We're Andromium. Making the Superbook, a $99 Android Laptop Shell. AMA

#140

Post by _qbjt »

robocat wrote: post #135
_qbjt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that's too bad but I guess it makes sense. Would buy a "pro" version of this if it had a built in low latency audio interface or even just a DAC. I'm not sure if the Android APIs support such a thing, however.

A Bluetooth speaker is a fine compromise.

Not for realtime audio applications, way too much latency.
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