[Gta04-owner] Openmoko Community Survey 2011 ? Results

Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller hns at goldelico.com
Tue Jan 17 15:09:28 CET 2012


Am 17.01.2012 um 11:49 schrieb Christoph Pulster:

>> A lot of people gave up and do not want Openmoko phone anymore.
> 
> The marketing of Openmoko Inc. failed. It was a short-sighted idee to  
> push the news with "first open source mobile" / "free your phone".
> It resulted in c. 15000 sold units, which is no success story in the  
> long term. Besides it was never a ready-to-use mobile phone for everyday  
> use. Even some Linux-die-for-geeks closed their drawers to store the  
> Freerunner into it.

I think the key problem was neither the device nor the software itself. It was
how everything was organized. Too many restarts from scratch instead of
fixing the issues everyone was aware of...

> The way out of this dead-end would be advertising the Freerunner as  
> "100% open source project platform with GSM functionality", mainly  
> aiming to business-customers, which base a solution on this hardware.
> Some intrepid small companies tried it, but support on Openmoko site was  
> poor, so they quit soon. Pushing this way of business, the sales would  

Business customers also need a long-term commitment that the devices
will remain in production and development as long as possible. This was not
given with stopping the GTA03 device shortly before it was finished.

> be factor 10x at least, which would help to survive Open Source companys  
> as Openmoko.
> 
> I suggest the same thing to GTA04.  There are very few geeks left who  
> are willing to pay 500+ euro for a so-lala-working piece of hardware  
> with no nice looking case at all.

The GTA04 is open to any small or large company who wants to experiment
with the GTA04 board and wants to make business out of it and ordering
larger quantities.

We also have a special "feature" of the GTA04: the design process is very
flexible even for low quantities. Add an RFID reader, replace the display etc.
A sample is the "GTA04-Custom" device. Try this with one of the "big 5" :)

Thanks for pointing out this additional "feature" of the GTA04.

> "the idea is good, but the world isn't ready yet"
> (Tocotronic, http://www.juzp.net/SDh4oshWf0GPO)

But still better than "The idea was good, but the world has gone ahead"...

Nikolaus




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