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Jesus Christ, HN and the creators of this (ugly, toy-like)phone seem to never get basic, rudimentary supply and demand in action that anybody running a business

Jesus Christ, HN and the creators of this (ugly, toy-like)phone seem to never get basic, rudimentary supply and demand in action that anybody running a business should already understand. People don't care about being tracked and they certainly don't care about running some obscure Linux distro on their damn phone. A million people showing dislike on how the market works won't magically change how it works. People buy fast, sexy, bleeding edge smartphones with GREAT CAMERAS (not surprised the whole website decided to omit this, it's probably terrible). Companies that make these phones thrive (see: Apple, Samsung, etc. ) while companies that focus on things only a handful of programmers like (for free)wither away into obscurity, see: the Ouya, Firefox OS, opensolaris, etc.

gue5t 9y ago
I'm demand, trying to find and coordinate with other demand for the same product in order to ensure that there is a supply. Please don't treat economics as normative when it is, at best, a descriptive science. Please don't shit on me for trying to find other people who have the same ideals and want to see them become reality. It's really discouraging and runs counter to the "anything is possible" spirit of hacking. There are specific reasons the Ouya and FxOS didn't make sense: an open game-console is already rather quixotic when all the games people want to play are closed-source and open non-games devices exist. FxOS was based on web technologies (huge mistake, given that they're garbage and inefficient), targetted at "emerging markets" (read: poor people, who for some reason are assumed to care less about their phones being slow and not having app compatibility?), and didn't make driver promises. If they had at least gotten calls to happen on a mainline kernel once I would have been convinced, but the real goal of FxOS was market share, not advancing user freedom (where hardware support, not userspace/apps, is the bottleneck). I don't know much about OpenSolaris.
Synaesthesia 9y ago
Sure that’s what marketing has taught us to desire but if people were educated about freedoms, rights and scary things like PRISM which we can do nothing about, I think this could be a promising start.
as1mov 9y ago
It's a niche phone, meant for a specific demographic. Not everything has to appeal to the lowest common denominator to be a success.
the_common_man 9y ago
I agree with what you said but... > People don't care about being tracked and they certainly don't care about running some obscure Linux distro on their damn phone. People care but convenience is just more important to bulk of the population. If something comes out that is equally convenient and does not track, people will pick one that does not track. Even Apple plays the privacy card these days for a reason.
lawrenceyan 9y ago
Have you ever heard of the concept of niche targeting? I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't. :)
- 5ilv3r 9y ago
  Juicaroo!
- imustbeevil 9y ago
  Niche targeting is how you end up selling 5,000 phones.
  - gue5t 9y ago
    With ~1000 more preorders the Librem 5 will be fully funded.
  - as1mov 9y ago
    To be fair, Essential didn't know who their niche target was (headphone jack haters maybe?). At least Librem 5 has very distinguishing features.
userpass 9y ago
>Jesus Christ, HN and the creators of this (ugly, toy-like)phone seem to never get basic, rudimentary supply and demand in action that anybody running a business should already understand. >People buy fast, sexy, bleeding edge smartphones with GREAT CAMERAS (not surprised the whole website decided to omit this, it's probably terrible). Companies that make these phones thrive (see: Apple, Samsung, etc. ) while companies that focus on things only a handful of programmers like (for free)wither away into obscurity, see: the Ouya, Firefox OS, opensolaris, etc. The demand side is high enough. The kickstarter already reached 800k USD which is 50% of their funding goal. Remember they are using off the shelf components that have already benefited from economies of scale. Selling a few thousand units is enough for them to turn a profit. If they tried to compete with high end phones like the essential phone does then their needed budget would instantly increase by two or three orders of magnitude but the demand wouldn't increase by the same amount because there are already successful competitors. I don't really know why you think everything needs to be the best and "disrupt" everything else to be profitable. It's basic economics. $600 * x (variable revenue) = $1000000 (estimated fixed costs for R&D) + $200 * x (variable costs for components & assembly) | - $200 * x $400 * x = $1000000 | / $400 x (variable revenue) = 2500 So I estimate they only need to sell 2500 units or capture 0.00016% of the market. It might be hard but it's certainly doable. By the way the phone can be plugged into a monitor and keyboard to act as a full linux desktop. That sounds interesting to me even if it didn't focus on privacy and freedom.

gue5t 9y ago

I'm demand, trying to find and coordinate with other demand for the same product in order to ensure that there is a supply. Please don't treat economics as normative when it is, at best, a descriptive science. Please don't shit on me for trying to find other people who have the same ideals and want to see them become reality. It's really discouraging and runs counter to the "anything is possible" spirit of hacking. There are specific reasons the Ouya and FxOS didn't make sense: an open game-console is already rather quixotic when all the games people want to play are closed-source and open non-games devices exist. FxOS was based on web technologies (huge mistake, given that they're garbage and inefficient), targetted at "emerging markets" (read: poor people, who for some reason are assumed to care less about their phones being slow and not having app compatibility?), and didn't make driver promises. If they had at least gotten calls to happen on a mainline kernel once I would have been convinced, but the real goal of FxOS was market share, not advancing user freedom (where hardware support, not userspace/apps, is the bottleneck). I don't know much about OpenSolaris.

Synaesthesia 9y ago

Sure that’s what marketing has taught us to desire but if people were educated about freedoms, rights and scary things like PRISM which we can do nothing about, I think this could be a promising start.

as1mov 9y ago

It's a niche phone, meant for a specific demographic. Not everything has to appeal to the lowest common denominator to be a success.

the_common_man 9y ago

I agree with what you said but... > People don't care about being tracked and they certainly don't care about running some obscure Linux distro on their damn phone. People care but convenience is just more important to bulk of the population. If something comes out that is equally convenient and does not track, people will pick one that does not track. Even Apple plays the privacy card these days for a reason.

lawrenceyan 9y ago

Have you ever heard of the concept of niche targeting? I definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't. :)

5ilv3r 9y ago
Juicaroo!
imustbeevil 9y ago
Niche targeting is how you end up selling 5,000 phones.
- gue5t 9y ago
  With ~1000 more preorders the Librem 5 will be fully funded.
- as1mov 9y ago
  To be fair, Essential didn't know who their niche target was (headphone jack haters maybe?). At least Librem 5 has very distinguishing features.

userpass 9y ago

>Jesus Christ, HN and the creators of this (ugly, toy-like)phone seem to never get basic, rudimentary supply and demand in action that anybody running a business should already understand. >People buy fast, sexy, bleeding edge smartphones with GREAT CAMERAS (not surprised the whole website decided to omit this, it's probably terrible). Companies that make these phones thrive (see: Apple, Samsung, etc. ) while companies that focus on things only a handful of programmers like (for free)wither away into obscurity, see: the Ouya, Firefox OS, opensolaris, etc. The demand side is high enough. The kickstarter already reached 800k USD which is 50% of their funding goal. Remember they are using off the shelf components that have already benefited from economies of scale. Selling a few thousand units is enough for them to turn a profit. If they tried to compete with high end phones like the essential phone does then their needed budget would instantly increase by two or three orders of magnitude but the demand wouldn't increase by the same amount because there are already successful competitors. I don't really know why you think everything needs to be the best and "disrupt" everything else to be profitable. It's basic economics. $600 * x (variable revenue) = $1000000 (estimated fixed costs for R&D) + $200 * x (variable costs for components & assembly) | - $200 * x $400 * x = $1000000 | / $400 x (variable revenue) = 2500 So I estimate they only need to sell 2500 units or capture 0.00016% of the market. It might be hard but it's certainly doable. By the way the phone can be plugged into a monitor and keyboard to act as a full linux desktop. That sounds interesting to me even if it didn't focus on privacy and freedom.