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Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

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Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#21

Post by smoyer »

mikekchar wrote: post #16
smoyer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand how Kickstarter works ... I was more referring to the fact that those who funded their Kickstarter campaign didn't get a return on their investment (there are plenty that lose). I won't go so far to say that the campaign was set up with false pretenses - I think the business probably just moved away from the consumer market - but the reality is that the backers funded the early stage growth of this compa…

I think the point that the person is trying to make is that when you pledge money on kickstarter, you are doing it in hopes that you will see the product emerge -- because you want to buy/use it. An angel investor rarely invests because they want the product. They invest because they want the ROI. In that sense, having an investor take care of the funding so that the product comes to market is a good thing for the ki…

For Kickstarter to continue to function, most projects need to deliver what the backer originally wanted - this, in a way, represents an ROI since (presumably) the product of the campaign was worth more to the backer than the amount they spent.

There are of course a whole tier of backers that get stickers or just thanks for backing projects at lower tiers - these backers are altruists who believe that the project is worthwhile without expecting compensation.

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#22

Post by ivanbakel »

StavrosK wrote: post #20
majewsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.

No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Imagine Amazon, but instead of next-day delivery you get next-year delivery and there's a 90% chance your product won't be delivered at all: That's what crowdfunding is . Traditionally, when funding a product, investors got a portion of the earnings to offset their ri…

The assumption you make is that the product would necessarily exist otherwise without the crowdfunding, which isn't accurate in my experience. The bet is sometimes between some product and no product.

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#23

Post by baybal2 »

piyush_soni wrote: post #5

Take money from 'community', develop using that and get famous, get enterprise funding, stop community project and return the 'community money'. Good idea.

>Take money from 'community', develop using that and get famous, get enterprise funding, stop community project and return the 'community money'. Good idea.

Except they took the "develop" stage out of the equation, and most likely never planned to make a functioning product except for shipping prototype grade minis.

See, what they did is not much different than other Android "OS" spinoffs: take white box product, and put android with custom skin on it. All of that costs $200k at maximum in China, not $2m.

What made them different thought is that they pumped so much into keep hype going. And that tactic paid them off. Corporate M&A people in the People Republic of China are known to be easily impressionable, if not worse.

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#24

Post by mattkevan »

majewsky wrote: post #8
setr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience seeing games on kickstarter, this is pretty much what is reasonable to expect. I mean the whole model is 1. Get money from community to fund game development 2. Sell the game again after, for extra profit, because why not And somewhere along the way there's usually a total mis-estimation of funds and resources At least here something was given back to the "community"... The entire crowdfunding plat…

> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.

My favourite corollary to this is 'At Internet scale, sturgeon's law is six sigma'

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#25

Post by franciscop »

My phone broke (only the screen) back last year and I used Remix OS as a substitute. I have to say I loved it! I could load the apps I wanted to use all from my desktop, including things that are limited by design to mobile/tablet.

I am so sad to see it gone, it seemed like the main project with a future in the space.

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#26

Post by ulkesh »

StavrosK wrote: post #20
majewsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.

No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Imagine Amazon, but instead of next-day delivery you get next-year delivery and there's a 90% chance your product won't be delivered at all: That's what crowdfunding is . Traditionally, when funding a product, investors got a portion of the earnings to offset their ri…

> You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you.

Anecdotal, of course, but "small chance" for me is that I have received 28 out of 29 projects I've helped fund in roughly the time-frame outlined. Only one project did I simply waste money on (the Lunecase for iPhone). For me, that's a 96.6% success rate of crowdfunded items I've backed.

The reason I crowdfund is for the product, sure, but also for the extras that the main product won't have upon release. It's not so much bragging rights, I couldn't care less about that. It's because I feel like I'm getting more for my money, well, because I am.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#28

Post by yorwba »

StavrosK wrote: post #20
majewsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.

No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Imagine Amazon, but instead of next-day delivery you get next-year delivery and there's a 90% chance your product won't be delivered at all: That's what crowdfunding is . Traditionally, when funding a product, investors got a portion of the earnings to offset their ri…

My experience with crowdfunding involves web-comic print runs, where the product already exists (published on the web), and the money is used to print the books, and produce stuff like posters or t-shirts.

Since none of these require a huge R&D effort, delivery is pretty much guaranteed (although any number of external factors might cause a delay).

So what's the difference to Amazon? Essentially, none of the products involved would be any profitable if produced on an individual basis, and independent creators can't really afford to print a hundred copies of their books in hopes of someone actually buying them. Using crowdfunding, they can gauge demand and then get a volume discount by printing a large number of books at once.

It all boils down to what you use crowdfunding for. I would never fund an effort to develop a new widget from scratch, but I might chip in to have a convincingly demonstrated prototype mass-manufactured when the alternative would be to not get it at all.

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#29

Post by kemonocode »

So with Remix OS being effectively canned, what other alternatives do remain for Android on x86? I do know they were leveraging the efforts of the aptly-named Android-x86 project, but I don't know to which extent they did and the state of completeness of said project.

Re: Development on Remix OS and related consumer products is being discontinued

#30

Post by FussyZeus »

StavrosK wrote: post #20
majewsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire crowdfunding platform is absurdity The totality of this statement is what's absurd. There's some good stuff on Kickstarter etc., but Sturgeon's Law applies: 90% of everything is crap.

No, it's crowdfunding itself that is absurd: You are literally pre-paying full price for a small chance that a product will actually be shipped to you. Imagine Amazon, but instead of next-day delivery you get next-year delivery and there's a 90% chance your product won't be delivered at all: That's what crowdfunding is . Traditionally, when funding a product, investors got a portion of the earnings to offset their ri…

I do Kickstarters for several artists I'm a fan of for print runs. Essentially the work is finished, or near finished, and the artist will crowdfund to get prints made to sell, they usually get enough funding to do about three fold what's ordered in the kickstarter. So the KS backers are already taken care of, and the remainder they'll sell at conventions over the next couple of years.

And yeah I've backed a couple gadgets too, they never came to market. So? It was like $35 total, and maybe two a year. I think I'll be alright.

As with most things, if you can't afford the risk, don't take it.

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