project customer

[Werner Almesberger]

Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:
> But if you are making your phone out of "beginning of life" components
> that other people are also using and that have a bit of life to them,
> you can sometimes get some components without having to buy 10 million
> of them....

Hmm, there is an opportunity around "beginning of life", namely
when the product doesn't have (enough) big (enough) customers yet.
At that time there's a chance to become a partner who makes a
reference design to help to spread the word.

After that, it gets difficult for a while, until the big guys have
had their fill. Let's call the stage of life that follows "mature".

What I'd aim for are "mature" chips. They're not brand-new, their
quirks and shortcomings are known, documentation may have leaked,
someone may even have written drivers for them already, you can
get them in small and large quantities, they still have many years
of life in them, and you can already get a glimpse of the roadmap
beyond that chip.

Not that I would sneer at a good opportunity to use some fancy
new chip, but I'd make sure not to depend too much on this.

- Werner