A marketing angle

David Schlesinger David.Schlesinger at palmsource.com
Mon Nov 20 20:15:28 CET 2006


Ben F-W writes:
>
> I'd be interested in your views on all this: if nothing else, are my 
>(multiple) assumptions correct? Does Sean / FIC have a long-term plan 
>for the marketing of this product? Can we as members of the community 
>help and if so, how?

Indeed, these were the sorts of questions that some of us were asking
Sean at Open Source in Mobile in Amsterdam. Sean (not unreasonably)
expects to get a lot of interest from the open source/free/etc.
development community, and that (the interest, at least) has been borne
out by some excited discussion of it on the GNOME Mobile and Embedded
list, etc. They've got some talented folks working on the initial
version of the software from all accounts. My impression was that they
were indeed planning on direct sales (which would align them with the
likes of Apple, at least if you go for iPhone rumors), but I'll let Sean
speak to that...

I expect that (initially, at least) the folks who go for this device
will be a similar, if not identical, crowd to the folks who've got Nokia
770s. As Ben says, it's a market, but not a huge one. If the software
stack is solid and usable enough, it could be possible to pitch it to
carriers in time; on the other hand, if there are problems with the
software or the device, it could get...interesting. 

That said, I'm strongly in favor of anything that gets more open source
software on more mobile devices. I'm looking forward to seeing more
details on the OpenMoko project, code, operating hardware, etc., etc...

--
David "Lefty" Schlesinger
Director, Open Source Technologies
ACCESS Co., Ltd.




More information about the community mailing list