Reactions From Other People to News of OpenMoko

[Bryan Fink]

On 1/26/07, Tehn Yit Chin <tehn.yit.chin at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a very interesting thread, it almost qualify as a very
> primitive market report for OpenMoko. :-)

Great to hear that people are enjoying this thread.  It seemed like a
new direction I hadn't heard discussed before.

> For me personally, I would like the phone to be a commercial success.
> Commercial success means a higher chance of version 2 & beyond of the
> phone being considered by FIC.
>
> Commercial success also means a critical mass would have been reached
> for market penetration. This could mean that good developers could
> develop great and innovative applications for the phone full time, and
> be able to make a living from it.
>
> Commercial success also means getting the non-coders excited about
> this phone, and want to buy it and use it.
>
> Without commercial success, I fear that this platform won't survive
> past this iteration.

I agree.  Commercial success is clearly a necessity to keep OpenMoko
alive.  Version two will be a much harder sell to investors if version
one doesn't pay off.  I daydream occasionally of being one of those
"good developers" making a living creating OpenMoko apps.

But, I still think we have to calm ourselves and not expect OpenMoko
to be an overnight success.  Much of the mass market has no idea what
"open" means when we use the term.  It will take time to educate them
and convince them of the benefits of such a system.  And, as I said,
unless Sean is a wizard at giving pitches, the likes of which this
world has never seen, there's no way OpenMoko can match the big
players' advertising budgets, so they'll have to rely on some
word-of-mouth "advertising."

I absolutely think it can be done.  Look at all of the companies in
recent years who have broken into markets that were considered full:
Google, Apple, Scion, LG, Whole Foods.  But, I think that we, as
developers targeting the OpenMoko platform, need to not burn ourselves
out by expecting an instant success, and being frustrated if it takes
more work than we thought to get there.

-Bryan