New Open Hardware company

[steven mosher]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Warren Baird
<wjbaird at alumni.uwaterloo.ca>wrote:

> Hi Steve,
>
> Congratulations!  Sounds like a very interesting project.
>
> The geek in me is say - "W00t - when can I get one!"


  Yup. same reaction of every geek I've showed it to.

>
>
> Unfortunately, the product manager in me is sounding a bit more like
> Laszlo:  raising questions like:  What's the business model -


   The business model. basically this question is "how do you monetize your
activity" and the
   answer is "we make money by selling hardware" that hardware will come
with a linux kernel.




> are you targeting end-users,


   Directly we target developers, yes. The numbers we need are very modest.
More modest
   than the number of freerunners for example.


> or are you trying to convince someone to OEM the design,


   I don't rule this out. At OM for example I had many requests for small
changes to FR
   that we could not execut on. VARs as well.



> customize it and market it to end-users?


   Yes, that's an option as well. But not required in the basic business
case.

>
>
> Personally I kinda hope you are targeting OEMs, although I don't see much
> of a mention of that on the website so far.    If you are targeting
> end-users, it seems to me that you are falling into the same trap that
> OpenMoko did - building some cool hardware, and assuming that the software
> side will eventually happen.


   The trap was a bit more complicated than that. At OM we tried to do:
   1. hardware design.
   2. Our own distro.
   3. Our own special applications ( diversity)
   4. Promote particular toolkits

   I'll blog more about this at Qi, but this much was clear. There was and
is plenty of good open
  source software. The difficulties in bring this to FR are detailed all to
well here. So, basically
   we think that we should start by shipping stable hardware and good
kernels. If we as a community
   cannot bring good end user apps to a solid foundation, then we will
figure out what other
   barriers need to be brought down.

>
>
> If however you have one or more visionary OEMs who will take your tech and
> build a compelling solution around it, that could be very interesting.   I
> really believe that a device like this needs to have a seamless, well
> integrated hardware and software stack to be successful.


  Yes, when we look at that problem we see two ways of solving it.

  1. Trying to do everything ourselves-- hardware and software.
  2. Focusing on key software partners. At OM, for example, the question
should
      have been: " do OM2009?" or focus on SHR  ( for example )


>
>
> For example, a device that a project manager inspecting a construction site
> could take with them and use to record the results of a site inspection
> could be very intersting.    I'm not sure that the nano-note is the right
> form-factor for that, but something similar might work.
>
> My day job involves creating software for visual collaboration used across
> a wide range of industries - if you want to chat more about that, send me an
> email off list...


  Just contact me through the developer list over at qi-hardware

>
>
> Warren
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 11:47 AM, steven mosher <moshersteven at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  A while back Wolfgang mentioned that he and I were starting a new
>> venture.Drop by and say hello.
>>
>> http://www.qi-hardware.com/
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Openmoko community mailing list
>> community at lists.openmoko.org
>> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Warren Baird - Photographer and Digital Artist
> http://www.synergisticimages.ca
>
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>
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