Ubuntu Edge Superphone Indiegogo Campaign

[david83]

Nice job ...

[djbenny]

i think maybe another twitter campaign?

[redxflag]

or a video compilation on youtube of people fricking out over the phone and how awesome it will be....

[zdrx4d3]

I made this design? I'm not a massive ubuntu user but i still love it as an OS and i think this phone deserves everything it gets

Hope everything goes well!



See it also on my DeviantART http://anthrabox.deviantart.com/art/...Edge-389436691

[djbenny]

duplicate

[Copper Bezel]

A bit of context for the discussion of what the Edge campaign needs to do to succeed was posted the Reddit, but I haven't seen it posted here yet - this is (unfortunately) the best funding projection I've seen based on the progress so far.

I want to stress something that I mentioned in the Reddit - I don't think perks are actually the issue, and Shuttleworth's resistance to them seems to me to reflect that he understands that. If every man, woman, and child on Earth bought an Ubuntu Edge T-shirt and no phone, the campaign would "succeed" and no one would get a phone. That's what Shuttleworth is talking about when he says it's not a charity - the campaign is about testing demand for phones, and if it's sufficient, producing them.

A lot of the design work has been committed up-front; Canonical has, in fact, sunk some real money into the Edge not reflected in the Indiegogo campaign (but I don't think the ROI depends on the campaign making, either.) The campaign is testing whether or not there's a market for the phone, and at present, there doesn't seem to be one, but the concept is pretty and the work on the phone OS interface and core apps presumably got a real boost that will still make it into real handsets.

I still think some degree of price differentiation is required. What most mobile phone manufacturers use in order to sell the same product to different customers is to vary the internal storage, and I believe a 64 GB version at $650 could work well. I imagine many prospective backers will feel that they are paying over the odds given that most people paid less than they would, something that does not work well in this age of price transparency, where the consumer expects to always get the lowest price. If you feel you're paying over the odds, chances are that you will not buy, regardless of whether the deal still represents good value for money or not.

While the 128GB version cannot now be made cheaper again, offering a different version for a lower price might work. Those who feel they won't need the full amount of memory think they still get a good deal (as others have paid more), while those who want the 128GB will continue to pay more, feeling they also get more.

Unfortunately, Canonical has pretty much ruled out this option. Perhaps phones with 64GB sold at $650 would make a loss? If not, I'd hope they reconsider.

I imagine that they would be taking a loss, yeah - because price differentiation doesn't work that way. When Google sells an 8GB Nexus 7 at $200 and one with double the memory at $250, the consumer getting the 16GB version is subsidizing the consumer getting the 8GB version, because the $250 is artificially inflated and the $200 artificially reduced. The $800 is not artificially inflated, so there's no subsidy to draw on. (Of course, even Canonical doesn't know what the actual cost of components and manufacturing is going to be, so they've probably given themselves some margins, including a profit margin, but those margins are just as sensible now as they were a week ago.)

[yJY4YYt]

@Copper Bezel

I think the core point is that the Edge product is price sensitive which has been proven as a fact. It's not about whether there's a market for the phone, it's whether there is a market at > $700. Currently the Answer is no > $700 and yes for ~$700 or under.

They could have introduced a Perk structure which enabled them to sell the phone for $695 and sell 40,000 of them, while also having other perks like a dock, case, special edition etc at premium prices that bring the average back to $800/unit . They have chosen not to to do that. It's something every other crowd funded campaign does but they seem reluctant to do the same. Would be good if they researched other projects more before starting this one.

The other issue is that as you mention, this campaign is to see if there is a market for the Edge phone. Problem is that most people in the market for a smart phone buy on contract. Its crazy as they end up paying more , but its a fact. These people are put off by the high up front costs and elect to buy on plan. And there lie it the issue, this campaign doesn't see if there is a market for this smartphone, it determines if there is a market amongst the minority of smart phone purchasers ie those willing to buy a phone out right.

Had they managed the near impossible to convince a carrier to offer the phone for $300 on contract for this campaign , they would have romped it in. But of course that would have been very difficult to do.

At the end of the day , all this campaign will show is whether there is a market for a ~ $780 phone out of the the minority of smart phone buyers who like to purchase outright rather than on contract.

[Copper Bezel]

Yeah, that's fair. But it's not as if there are carriers that offer cheaper (cost-based) plans for phones you bought from another vendor, since every network is playing the same game of subsidizing the initial purchase. (Buying on contract isn't paying "more" in any meaningful sense unless there's a way to pay less - that is, until there's a provider that doesn't sell handsets and provides carrier service at a reasonable profit margin over cost - it just means that the cost of the hardware is invisible and irrelevant in most cases.)

I'm not convinced that $699.99(9999) is a magic number, though. I think Canonical set that up for themselves by offering the initial phones at the sub-$700 USD price in the first place. There are enough unknowns with this device that I think Canonical had some control over the perceived value before launching the campaign. If we're looking at it through the "high-end phone" lens instead of the "desktop-convergence" lens, it's still hard to predict how it'll stack up to the Samsung Galaxy S5 presumably to be launched around the same time or the iPhone 6 presumably coming a few months later (though one would assume that it's roughly the superior case quality of the latter and the superior innards of the former.)

Edit: Should say that I'm not sure that adding perks for accessories would have made sense. There are already "special edition" copies at $10,000, although I suppose that they'd be more likely to sell at 1000. = ) Docks and cases still have to consider the cost and value of the accessory itself; if the base price was $700, there's no way the campaign could nab an extra $100 profit on average that way. That'd mean getting half of the backers to pay $920 for the $700 phone plus a $20 dock - and they'd need to add $400,000 to the campaign target to come to the same number of phones. = ) The point of the campaign is that backers get back what they put in, and I don't see any way of fudging that that meets the goals of the campaign.

[sHtbCPB]

The link collection is much helpful, thanks!

[GKY6kbA]

Hi there,
I saw some people asking about additionnal VAT in the European Union. The answer on the Indiegogo page is not really helpful for people outside UK, even Victor has not been clear.
Maybe they can add the information that in the EU, there are no other VAT if the product has been sold by a company inside the EU and the local VAT has been applied, which is likely the case.
The official link speaking of this on the EU is :
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs...e/index_en.htm
Hope this helps people to buy more phones as some were afraid of having to pay for a supplementary 20% of the price !