A marketing angle

Richard Franks richard.franks at drdc-rddc.gc.ca
Wed Nov 22 23:22:20 CET 2006


On Wed, 2006-11-22 at 21:34 +0000, Ben F-W wrote:
> However, if what you say is true, there would be a major effort required 
> by the rival in converting the app over to their handset (if it runs 
> Qtopia). That doesn't mean that they couldn't do it, but it's a lot harder.
> And you should not forget that the company has to do it alone. No
> community jumps in and help.

Something like Oracles "Unbreakable Linux" (or indeed many other Linux
Distros), shows that it's not unfeasible to re-brand someone else's work
with your own logos - once you've done the main port, you selectively
merge patches.


> This does rest on the assumption that the rival's system isn't based on 
> X and GTK and so on, which would mean there could still be a problem. 
> But it's a lot less likely in the short term.

Hmm.. what drew my interest was the open-source nature of the project,
translated for the non-geek end user, the main competitive
differentiation is that you will be able to find software for the phone
to do just about anything. That is, instead of focusing on a particular
'killer app', make the 'killer app' the fact that you are not being
restricted by or charged for features or applications.

That said, I'm sure we're going to see some _very_ interesting
applications :-)

Richard




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