Apple is going to beat all competitors

[Nkoli]

On 9/7/07, jjh at megalomanic.net <jjh at megalomanic.net> wrote:

>
> The iPhone killer, competitor, or comparisons you have been describing -
> to
> me - should not be done against the neo.  The iPhone killer will be a
> later
> model OpenMoko phone brought out after much custom development and
> innovative ideas are done against the Neo1973.  The basic production
> Neo1973 is what will begin the end of the iPhone - and all other phones -
> but it is not going to be released as "the one" (pun!) ready to do it.  It
> will take some time and community innovation for the neo to be a "killer
> phone".



It's truly unfortunate, but it is inevitable that any touchscreen phone
released in the post iphone market will be compared to the iphone. It will
be compared to the prada and the HTC touch to name but a few. The media can
(again, unfortunately) make or break a product and once a meme is born, it's
hard to get rid of. The neo has been tagged the anti iphone. It has gotten a
lot of hype without launching a single official ad. Whether it was
originally intended to be a geek phone doesn't matter. Things have gotten a
little bit out of hand and people all over (geeks and non geeks) are excited
for the product. It has essentially become the little grassroots project
that could.

If it doesn't live up to the hype, the media will surely tear it to pieces
before it even hits the ground. Who knows what will happen to future
products from openmoko then? With the iphone price cut, the neo just lost
the 'cheaper alternative' tag. Being unlocked doesn't make the neo special -
you can buy any phone unlocked and unfettered off the net. Having a
community of developers doesn't make it special either - you can get
thousands of user developed (ie non commercial) software for all (real)
smart phones. What makes the neo special is how loose a collar neo owners
have in comparison to other unlocked smart phones.

Come October or November, I can see blogs and other news media checking off
all these points as reasons to bypass the neo. The question becomes whether
the newly created openmoko team can survive if only a few thousand phones
are sold. Maybe this is the volume they expected to sell from the get go. I
wouldn't know. If that's the case, then none of this really matters since
they are guaranteed to sell that much at the least.
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