Community update: Regarding Neo FreeRunner pre-orders

[Michael Shiloh]

Hello,

A number of times you have asked about pre-orders. Here is the official 
word from our VP of Marketing:

Over the next couple of months you will see the following 3 announcements:

1. When the production hardware is solid and signed off, we will 
announce pricing and availability. That is, we will announce the 
expected price and the expected date on which the web store will open.

2. When the first production run is complete, we will announce that.

3. When the phones reach the distribution centers in Europe and USA, we 
will open the web store and begin taking orders.


We are actively looking at pre-orders, but as discussed in the past 
there are a number of very difficult complications in taking pre-orders. 
We think the best solution is to build 10 times as many phones as we did 
the last time, so that pre-orders will not be necessary.

As many of you know, ramping up a factory for production is not 
instantaneous. We plan to do a number of pre-production runs to iron out 
manufacturing issues and to assure high yield. These pre-production runs 
will occur before the official production run, so that when we make 
announcements 2 and 3 above we will be highly confident in our ability 
to manufacture and deliver a very large number of handsets.

Regards,
Michael