5 ms·

Openmoko sold 13000 phones, which is much more than "dozens." Commercial failure does not necessarily mean you can fit all the customers in a room.

TylerE 7y ago
13k is a rounding error. Apple sells that many iphones every 30 minutes. (I'm not kidding... they sell 217M iPhones a year = 594k a day = 24.9k/hr)
- bildung 7y ago
  This is about open source phones, of which Apple has sold exactly zero.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    This makes open source phone cheaper to produce? Cheaper to ship? 13k phones won't cover even the costs of production, much less R&D
    - squarefoot 7y ago
      Give FOSS phones the same media coverage of the iPhone, possibly including its ad induced reality distortion field, and they will sell like candies. Seriously, once the software is ready, 30 seconds of any popular celebrity showing one would make it sell hundreds thousands in a week. Problem is the small manufacturers couldn't either pay for that level of advertising or satisfy the demand without turning themselves into what they're fighting against now (venture capital, investors etc. don't come free), so I welcome numbers as small as 13k or even much less if that means the product isn't polluted by the typical corporate mindset (close as much as possible to protect intellectual property, make it obsolete sooner to sell newer models, etc). Oh and by having an unusual phone I can also play the elitist bastard with friends:*)
      - dmitriid 7y ago
        Why didn't it work for Windows Phones then?
        squarefoot 7y ago
        Interesting point. I have seen some friends happily using Windows phones but most of them were/are either Microsoft employees or working mostly with Windows software, so I guess they needed the deepest integration with the Windows ecosystem, which is understandable. As for other users, it is possible that Windows phones had either some limitation compared to other platforms or they lacked the killer app that would make it appealing to other userbases. Having never used one, I can only speculate that MS wanted to change too much too early by making an user interface very consistent with the one they introduced on PCs but hard to digest just like that one, and this could have brought users away both from the PC and mobile devices. I have always found in the past very hard to migrate non technical users from Windows to Linux, but the adoption of the new interfaces from Windows 8 onward made some people I know so furious that it became really easy to convince them to try Linux; in some cases it was them who asked me to install it. That would be unthinkable before Windows 8. In the mobile world I guess it was even harder to grow an userbase since the alternative was already mainstream. They probably should have copied or mocked a mainstream mobile interface, that is, offer something an user from either Android or iOS would not find alien to use, then offer something more, say free Office apps, then after the userbase had grown start to build the rest.
        dmitriid 7y ago
        > They probably should have copied or mocked a mainstream mobile interface, that is, offer something an user from either Android or iOS would not find alien to use, then offer something more, say free Office apps, then after the userbase had grown start to build the rest. Why would the user base grow? The main problem Windows Phone had was the dearth of apps that users actually wanted. MS had to build their own YouTube client (and IIRC got into trouble with Google). They've sunk billions into it: enticing developers, outright paying for the development of apps, creating apps on their own, spending huge amounts of money on advertisement (I remember at one point when half of popular TV shows featured Windows Phones). The result? It did sell ~100 million phones in about 5 years and then discontinued the entire enterprise. So, back to the original claim: > Give FOSS phones the same media coverage of the iPhone, possibly including its ad induced reality distortion field, and they will sell like candies. Why would it work for a FOSS phone when it didn't for MS?
- lostgame 7y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted? It’s a fascinating statistic alone.
paulcole 7y ago
During Q4 of 2018, Apple sold something like 20,000 iPhones an hour. 13k is an order of magnitude too low to be considered a commercial failure.
dorfsmay 7y ago
Mine was unusable until I installed Android, at which point I bought an Android phone a quarter of the thickness and mass, and better screen resolution (and likely better radios as well). I too bought it because I thought I'd hack around and "maybe contribute" which quickly turn in "why am I wasting so much time on something that will probably never work".
- Tepix 7y ago
  The screen resolution of the OpenMoko was very good at the time: It had a 640x480 2.8" screen which means a very good 286ppi.
Mashimo 7y ago
Got one. Never really used it. It was not reliable.
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  Got one. Used it for a few years. It was amazing (though not without its quirks of course).
  - dzypa 7y ago
    For most people "quirks" are unacceptable in their mobile phones. Normally one can't afford to lose a call or to have the maps application crash when you're trying to get around.

TylerE 7y ago

13k is a rounding error. Apple sells that many iphones every 30 minutes. (I'm not kidding... they sell 217M iPhones a year = 594k a day = 24.9k/hr)

bildung 7y ago
This is about open source phones, of which Apple has sold exactly zero.
- dmitriid 7y ago
  This makes open source phone cheaper to produce? Cheaper to ship? 13k phones won't cover even the costs of production, much less R&D
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    Give FOSS phones the same media coverage of the iPhone, possibly including its ad induced reality distortion field, and they will sell like candies. Seriously, once the software is ready, 30 seconds of any popular celebrity showing one would make it sell hundreds thousands in a week. Problem is the small manufacturers couldn't either pay for that level of advertising or satisfy the demand without turning themselves into what they're fighting against now (venture capital, investors etc. don't come free), so I welcome numbers as small as 13k or even much less if that means the product isn't polluted by the typical corporate mindset (close as much as possible to protect intellectual property, make it obsolete sooner to sell newer models, etc). Oh and by having an unusual phone I can also play the elitist bastard with friends:*)
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      Why didn't it work for Windows Phones then?
      - squarefoot 7y ago
        Interesting point. I have seen some friends happily using Windows phones but most of them were/are either Microsoft employees or working mostly with Windows software, so I guess they needed the deepest integration with the Windows ecosystem, which is understandable. As for other users, it is possible that Windows phones had either some limitation compared to other platforms or they lacked the killer app that would make it appealing to other userbases. Having never used one, I can only speculate that MS wanted to change too much too early by making an user interface very consistent with the one they introduced on PCs but hard to digest just like that one, and this could have brought users away both from the PC and mobile devices. I have always found in the past very hard to migrate non technical users from Windows to Linux, but the adoption of the new interfaces from Windows 8 onward made some people I know so furious that it became really easy to convince them to try Linux; in some cases it was them who asked me to install it. That would be unthinkable before Windows 8. In the mobile world I guess it was even harder to grow an userbase since the alternative was already mainstream. They probably should have copied or mocked a mainstream mobile interface, that is, offer something an user from either Android or iOS would not find alien to use, then offer something more, say free Office apps, then after the userbase had grown start to build the rest.
        dmitriid 7y ago
        > They probably should have copied or mocked a mainstream mobile interface, that is, offer something an user from either Android or iOS would not find alien to use, then offer something more, say free Office apps, then after the userbase had grown start to build the rest. Why would the user base grow? The main problem Windows Phone had was the dearth of apps that users actually wanted. MS had to build their own YouTube client (and IIRC got into trouble with Google). They've sunk billions into it: enticing developers, outright paying for the development of apps, creating apps on their own, spending huge amounts of money on advertisement (I remember at one point when half of popular TV shows featured Windows Phones). The result? It did sell ~100 million phones in about 5 years and then discontinued the entire enterprise. So, back to the original claim: > Give FOSS phones the same media coverage of the iPhone, possibly including its ad induced reality distortion field, and they will sell like candies. Why would it work for a FOSS phone when it didn't for MS?
lostgame 7y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted? It’s a fascinating statistic alone.

paulcole 7y ago

During Q4 of 2018, Apple sold something like 20,000 iPhones an hour. 13k is an order of magnitude too low to be considered a commercial failure.

dorfsmay 7y ago

Mine was unusable until I installed Android, at which point I bought an Android phone a quarter of the thickness and mass, and better screen resolution (and likely better radios as well). I too bought it because I thought I'd hack around and "maybe contribute" which quickly turn in "why am I wasting so much time on something that will probably never work".

Tepix 7y ago
The screen resolution of the OpenMoko was very good at the time: It had a 640x480 2.8" screen which means a very good 286ppi.

Mashimo 7y ago

Got one. Never really used it. It was not reliable.

seba_dos1 7y ago
Got one. Used it for a few years. It was amazing (though not without its quirks of course).
- dzypa 7y ago
  For most people "quirks" are unacceptable in their mobile phones. Normally one can't afford to lose a call or to have the maps application crash when you're trying to get around.