eliad-kimhy
August 7th, 2013, 05:54 PM
As I'm sure many of you have already noticed, the Ubuntu Edge Indigogo campaign has so far been a rather strange, hopeful and (to some) nerve wrecking endeavor. Chief reason among the many reasons for this seems to be strange, almost counter-productive practices and decisions made by canonical.
For example-
- Setting the "early bird" price at ~$600, and then hiking it up to ~$780- this is an act of commercial suicide. Most companies, when marketing a product set the MSRP at a considerably higher price than market value, and then market it for a lower price, what canonical did was set an unreasonably low price at the get go, which then sets in consumers' minds as the default price, and then hike it up a couple hundreds. It is hard to ignore from a marketing standpoint, and I doubt canonical simply did not think of that.
- Raising $32 million in 30 days- record setting aside, this is a highly unlikely goal. Seeing that the amount of money required for the project is set at $32 million and cannot change I would expect canonical to look for some pre-investments, prior to launching a campaign, or extend the time limit for donations to 60,90 or 120 days (what's the difference, you might ask, the project is stuck on day 10 anyway. Well, there's a big difference in perception, seriousness, and amount of time given to sell the product. $32M in 30 days "seems" like a crazy gamble, and is thus less attractive.)
Seeing as how Canonical is dead serious about this, it seems baffling why they would go with a "we either do this in 30 days, or it never happens" approach.
- Effort already invested in creating this product- how many man hours were put into the creation of this product? Designing it, contacting manufacturers, etc. The truth is we don't know. It could be a drop in the water and therefore easy to discard, or it could be more considerable.
If they fail to "kickstart" the project, will they just throw it all away? Forget this ever happened?
- Mentions of "secret backers" by Mark Shuttleworth for a product that is intended to be crowdsourced.
In light of some of these facts many people have come up with theories that diverge from the pretence of "we're trying to crowdsource the best phone in the market just to see if it sticks, and if it doesn't.. Well, you know, whatever..".
Some people believe that this is nothing but an elaborate PR campaign for Ubuntu's mobile OS, sticking to the old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity (if you consider failing this attempt bad publicity), while others say this is an attempt to justify some sort of future collaboration with a big company, an alibi of sorts, by saying "we tried to make this product open, it failed". Both theories assert that the project was destined to fail.
I personally believe this is all a huge PR stunt meant to add drama, and an "open sourceness" to the creation of the Ubuntu Edge. I believe that the money is already there, in the form of outside investments, and that this money will come into the picture at a later point to "save" the project from collapse. I also believe the price will be lowered towards the end to somewhere closer to its original ~$600 price, in similar fashion to how companies first set a high MSRP and then lower the actual price.
I've donated my $780 to the project, as I feel it is well worth the extra $180 from the average price of a high end phone. I despise the current trends in the mobile industry- the cowardly clinging to proven, old standards, the growing of screens to allow for more thinness, the 16GB-32GB industry standards, etc. I'd be happy to break away from these.
For example-
- Setting the "early bird" price at ~$600, and then hiking it up to ~$780- this is an act of commercial suicide. Most companies, when marketing a product set the MSRP at a considerably higher price than market value, and then market it for a lower price, what canonical did was set an unreasonably low price at the get go, which then sets in consumers' minds as the default price, and then hike it up a couple hundreds. It is hard to ignore from a marketing standpoint, and I doubt canonical simply did not think of that.
- Raising $32 million in 30 days- record setting aside, this is a highly unlikely goal. Seeing that the amount of money required for the project is set at $32 million and cannot change I would expect canonical to look for some pre-investments, prior to launching a campaign, or extend the time limit for donations to 60,90 or 120 days (what's the difference, you might ask, the project is stuck on day 10 anyway. Well, there's a big difference in perception, seriousness, and amount of time given to sell the product. $32M in 30 days "seems" like a crazy gamble, and is thus less attractive.)
Seeing as how Canonical is dead serious about this, it seems baffling why they would go with a "we either do this in 30 days, or it never happens" approach.
- Effort already invested in creating this product- how many man hours were put into the creation of this product? Designing it, contacting manufacturers, etc. The truth is we don't know. It could be a drop in the water and therefore easy to discard, or it could be more considerable.
If they fail to "kickstart" the project, will they just throw it all away? Forget this ever happened?
- Mentions of "secret backers" by Mark Shuttleworth for a product that is intended to be crowdsourced.
In light of some of these facts many people have come up with theories that diverge from the pretence of "we're trying to crowdsource the best phone in the market just to see if it sticks, and if it doesn't.. Well, you know, whatever..".
Some people believe that this is nothing but an elaborate PR campaign for Ubuntu's mobile OS, sticking to the old saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity (if you consider failing this attempt bad publicity), while others say this is an attempt to justify some sort of future collaboration with a big company, an alibi of sorts, by saying "we tried to make this product open, it failed". Both theories assert that the project was destined to fail.
I personally believe this is all a huge PR stunt meant to add drama, and an "open sourceness" to the creation of the Ubuntu Edge. I believe that the money is already there, in the form of outside investments, and that this money will come into the picture at a later point to "save" the project from collapse. I also believe the price will be lowered towards the end to somewhere closer to its original ~$600 price, in similar fashion to how companies first set a high MSRP and then lower the actual price.
I've donated my $780 to the project, as I feel it is well worth the extra $180 from the average price of a high end phone. I despise the current trends in the mobile industry- the cowardly clinging to proven, old standards, the growing of screens to allow for more thinness, the 16GB-32GB industry standards, etc. I'd be happy to break away from these.