Some light ahead...

[Jim Thompson]

Igor Foox wrote:
> 
> On 27-Apr-07, at 5:09 PM, Duncan Hudson wrote:
> 
> I think it's wrong to assume that every customer that FIC loses with the 
> Neo will go to the iPhone. First of all the iPhone's price point is 
> quite high when compared to the Neo, and will be out of reach for many. 
> Also see my point bellow about distribution channels.

I can afford an iPhone, my wife thinks I should get one, I just don't 
want one.

Mostly because its closed.

It would be nice to get 802.11 & Bluetooth on the Neo though.

And, as I said before, "slip happens".

>>> 2) the iPhone may slip too.
>>>
>>> Its all the rumor in the Apple world these days.  We already know 
>>> that Apple has slipped its next OS release (10.5) because it put some 
>>> large number of its OS folks on the iPhone project, in order to get 
>>> it out the door.
>> It may, but they have a hell of a lot more at stake if they slip the 
>> date.  To pull developers of OSX, put them on the iPhone, and then 
>> slip both dates?  Their stock would tank unbelievably - I don't think 
>> they'll slip the iPhone date.

It might not tank, but it would slouch.

They'll slip if it doesn't work right.

>>> 3) the iPhone is being sold (in the US) through AT&T/Cingular's 
>>> channels, which are deep and wide.  Getting a "consumer" to the 
>>> iPhone will be easy.  Getting that same individual to an OpenMoko 
>>> phone will be much more difficult.
>> Getting the 'average joe' to the OpenMoko unknown is going to be 
>> difficult at best.  Getting the 'average joe' to the OpenMoko when the 
>> iPhone, et. al., are flooding the market will be next to impossible.
> 
> I don't know what FIC's plans are for selling the phone through mobile 
> providers in the future, but having 'average joe' buy the handset from 
> FIC directly is _the_ major barier to wider distribution in my opinion. 

It would be nice if FIC would allow distributors **who know what they're 
doing** to sell the phone, perhaps pre-loaded with a specialized app.

> At least in North America, not many 'average joes' buy their handset 
> from anyone but the mobile carrier. So if FIC can get the phone 
> distributed through carriers, I can easily see them having pretty good 
> sales figures. Whether carriers would like to sell an open phone is an 
> entirely different story of course...

They won't, its toast in that channel.

But you can't really buy a boxed linux distro most places where you can 
buy Windows XP/Vista or MacOS X, either.

>>> 4) Relax... you're not going to be able to add features to an iPhone.
>> OSX is unix based, so you and I both know that one will be able to add 
>> apps to the iPhone.  We also both know that for it to succeed in the 
>> business environment they'll have to allow 3rd party apps.
>>
>> Know that I want nothing more than for this device to succeed, but I 
>> truly believe with each slip its success becomes more difficult.  
>> There comes a point in the game when one just has to play the hand 
>> that they're holding - whether it's a winning hand or not...
> 
> Agreed, and much like many others I'm eagerly waiting for the chance to 
> pre-order the first revision of the Neo.

Exactly >where< does one do this?

Jim