Ubuntu Edge will miss $32M crowdfunding target • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu Edge will miss $32M crowdfunding target

#91

Post by incision » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 5:44 PM UTC

skaevola wrote: post #68

MarcScott wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I'm speculating but; hitting 16m at around 800 a phone equates to 20,000 phones. That's 20k potential sales of a phone that doesn't exist, using an OS that's still in development, to a tiny subset of individuals willing to engage in crowd sourcing. That's pretty impressive if you ask me. Imagine how well a carrier-subsidised version would do?

20k is nothing. Smartphone manufacturers will laugh at you for fewer than hundreds of thousands. To get a good deal they want to see millions.

Did you miss this part?

>"That's 20k potential sales of a phone that doesn't exist, using an OS that's still in development, to a tiny subset of individuals willing to engage in crowd sourcing."

I think it's pretty clear what the parent means to say there. That demonstrating that much demand after accounting for multiple, large limiting factors could extrapolate to much larger numbers with those factors removed.

Cards Against Humanity collected $15.5K from 750 people via Kickstarter and went on to make an estimated $12M with wide availability [0].

The card makers of the world likely would have laughed at a game with 750 sales, but today I'm sure they'd all love to hold down the top 4 best-seller spots on Amazon [1].

Yes, phones and card games aren't a direct comparison, but the parent had a good point and focusing on one number is awfully myopic.

0: http://www.chicagogrid.com/enterprise/cards-against-humanity...

1: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/toys-and-games/16623901...

Re: Ubuntu Edge will miss $32M crowdfunding target

#92

Post by davidgerard » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 7:00 PM UTC

It may have been a bad idea to have spent the past few years alienating their old PC userbase.

Re: Ubuntu Edge will miss $32M crowdfunding target

#93

Post by georgemcbay » Sat, Aug 03, 2013, 10:24 PM UTC

Alterlife wrote: post #29

georgemcbay wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree that either the Windows or Ubuntu names are really a negative for the phone brands offered by each. I do think the phone OS market is a tough nut to crack given the extremely wide penetration of iOS and Android, but that persists regardless of OS name. You could call Windows Phone anything you want and it still has all of the same problems with lack of apps, lack of widespread handset maker support, etc…

I don't think that the desktop brand is a negative for the phone. They made compromises to the desktop UI to meet mobile demands in the name of 'convergence' -- justifying the use of the same brand... but as a result, UI experience has suffered on both form factors.

Ah, yes, I misunderstood the point you were making, sorry.

I would agree that the compromises they made for their desktop versions are a negative, at least in the way they did them.

They could support both models fairly well (eg. in Microsoft's case with a few tweaks to bring back the proper start-menu and an option to just not see the metro screen for desktop users who really don't want it), but both seem to have adopted the modern "Apple" style of making things as simple as possible with no option for advanced usages, which I think is a mistake lots of companies (including Google) are making these days.

The value to me of old Google products, old Microsoft products, and older Ubuntu (which lives on in other Linux distros) was precisely that they weren't Apple-esque in terms of dictating to me how I'm supposed to use it for the sake of ultra simplicity. Now that they are attempting to be Apple-esque they are losing the hearts and minds of people like me, and not gaining much with the other group (AFAICT), because no matter how bad they try to be Apple, Apple is still a much better Apple than they are.

Re: Ubuntu Edge will miss $32M crowdfunding target

#94

Post by sirkneeland » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 12:22 AM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #90

jamii wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1: Wearable computing. We already have laser projectors, laser keyboards, HUDs and optical gesture recognition. 2014 will bring physical gesture recognition (Myo). Unfortunately most phones don't support HDMI or USB out and don't have the battery capacity to support this kind of usage. That leaves you using clunky, low-powered hobbyist hardware. 2: Direct development. When your phone is your computer there is no hass…

Would have been something new if the N900 hadn't got there already, and then been piloted expertly into the ground by a flailing, incompetent Nokia. Bah, I loved that phone.

Thanks, OPK!

Re: Ubuntu Edge will miss $32M crowdfunding target

#95

Post by seferphier » Sun, Aug 04, 2013, 10:51 AM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #58

seferphier wrote: post #56

In my mind, they failed to miss their crowdfunding target because of a poorly coordinated campaign. 1) lack of tiers - t shirts came way too late. They should have added phone docks and exclusive first preview to their convergence. 2) pricing - the sweet spot for the pricing was about 650. they priced the product way too high

the sweet spot for the pricing was about 650. they priced the product way too high Price versus demand is not the only constraint here. It is an incredibly ambitious piece of hardware, so obviously more expensive to produce than say the iphone 5. The iPhone 5 costs $849 for the 64GB model. That's half the memory, and more expensive than the Ubuntu edge even at these higher price tiers. Unfortunately most people will…

I agree with your points. I think to succeed they need a higher kickstarter goal to have the economies of scales.

honestly, i foresaw that ubuntu edge would fail when they introduced the new price tiers. If all the discounted price tiers would have sold out it would have generated a few extra million. Once those are sold out - the people would not buy a $825 phone and the campaign would be stuck

I would relaunch the campaign after knowing the elasticity of the curve.

Re: Ubuntu Edge will miss $32M crowdfunding target

#96

Post by DannyBee » Mon, Aug 05, 2013, 7:23 PM UTC

phaemon wrote: post #57

DannyBee wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so you honestly believe canonical is doing this out of the goodness of their heart, and doesn't want to control it?

Yes. Of course. Why else would Canonical have used the GPL for the software they'd developed? Why else would they release their OS for free? Profits have clearly never been their overriding reason for existence and they look very much like a social enterprise to me. See, this is why I hate cynicism: it's intellectually lazy. It doesn't bother looking at the actual detail of any particular case, just hand-waves away d…

"Yes. Of course. Why else would Canonical have used the GPL for the software they'd developed?"

They don't. They use AGPL for most of the newer stuff, and do so specifically because they want to make money of cloud services. They want to control those services, too.

I'm not sure what led to the conclusion you have that Canonical is a social enterprise (other than their marketing copy), any more than redhat (which also release software on the GPL) is a social enterprise.

Canonical, from what I see, tries to take advantage of this position (in the same way redhat used to), but I see absolutely nothing to suggest they are any different from any previous company in this space.

If you are going to suggest they are different than every previous company, i would suggest that you bear the burden of showing that.