Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

Post by jasonlaramburu » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:23 AM UTC

rbritton wrote: post #104

mikestew wrote: post #95

I love my Jambox. What I love even more is the 20W Anker speaker that I just bought for a fifth of what the Jambox cost. And though physically a bit larger, the Anker sounds tons better. The Jambox was a fine product for its day, but the “decent sounding Bluetooth speaker” problem is now solved, and for not a lot of money. Headsets? I dunno, are Bluetooth earpieces still a thing? That leaves us with fitness trackers,…

I vastly prefer the Anker audio quality, but I ran into a situation recently where the Jambox was the only speaker that would work adequately. I purchased a Bluetooth transmitter (the model is not relevant -- all devices I tried behaved the same) that I connected to a streaming audio source (i.e., it can only send data as fast as the audio input is received). Not one modern Bluetooth speaker that I tried, Anker inclu…

Post by hellokarma » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:39 AM UTC

stingrae wrote: post #11

The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. With so many high profile VC backed (Fitbit, GoPro, Hello, Juicero, Coin, Pearl, ect.) and kickstarted (Lily.ai, Pebble) failures, no one is willing to risk it.

Post by awad » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:54 AM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #102

pcsanwald wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honest question: why then did no one copy the iPod, and no one has copied the iPhone with any success? as soon as the iPod came out way back in the day, the criticism was that it would soon be copied. No one ever did, and I worked in the music business at the time and was familiar with everything on the market. nothing ever came close, apple made a ton of money. it's a common thing to say that it's not defensible/can…

why then did no one copy the iPod Apple had complete control of the small form factor harddrives. Noone else could get their hands on them. There were other MP3 players before iPod, but they were either too big, or couldn't hold enough music. By the time flash storage caught up, it was more about fashion.

Post by dilemma » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 4:59 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #67

pcsanwald wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honest question: why then did no one copy the iPod, and no one has copied the iPhone with any success? as soon as the iPod came out way back in the day, the criticism was that it would soon be copied. No one ever did, and I worked in the music business at the time and was familiar with everything on the market. nothing ever came close, apple made a ton of money. it's a common thing to say that it's not defensible/can…

I think the simplest answer is that apple simply kept innovating at a pace that shenzen couldn't match. Back in the iPod's hey-day, every new release was a groundbreaking improvement in miniaturization. The other OEMs were racing to copy the iPod mini while Apple was developing the iPod nano, or the iPod Colour while apple was working on the iPod video. and, of course, as another reply says the software has always be…

Post by jmspring » Fri, Jul 07, 2017, 5:02 AM UTC

EpicEng wrote: post #80

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. So I haven't worked at a hardware start-up but it seemed pretty difficult even before these companies to raise funding versus a pure software play. I'm not necessarily convinced this makes it easier or harder. Is there a specific reason you think it will be harder now? Also, for what it's worth, Fitbit and GoPro are still going. I'm convince…

I worked at a VC funded hardware start up for the first eight years of my career. You'll never read about it here though; we made digital pathology scanners. When I left we had sold the company for ~300M and were bringing in about ~30M / year in revenue. I guess my point is that there is more going on in the VC space then you'll read about on HN.