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The CEO of this brand once portrayed himself as a first-time entrepreneur, launching a small batch of products at extremely low prices, then raising prices and
by justnoice 28d ago
The CEO of this brand once portrayed himself as a first-time entrepreneur, launching a small batch of products at extremely low prices, then raising prices and quickly rolling out new models. But earlier this year, one of his competitors publicly presented a series of allegations that were subsequently substantiated, including that he had actually been involved in multiple previous ventures with a highly questionable track record, and that some of the products' key specifications had been seriously misrepresented.
The company later apologized for the inaccurate specifications, claiming that the misinformation was unintentional. However, it offered neither a recall nor any meaningful compensation to affected customers. Soon afterward, the brand launched yet another new product, only for customers to discover after receiving it that the promotional images were also misleading.
At the end of the day, this brand's business model seems to be little more than assembling cheap off-the-shelf components and using aggressive social media marketing to convince people that they need its products.
- boxed 28d agoOk... but.. are there other companies with comparable consumer level products? If so, can you name some?
- jacek 28d agoOnyx Boox will be releasing one soon ("Picco" AFAIR?). But they break GPL.
- postepowanieadm 28d agoI own Palm and software is a mess.
- wahnfrieden 28d agoAnd no Android
- boxed 28d agoSoon? Come now.
- ZeroGravitas 28d agoThe crosspoint software lists a few different manufacturers devices: https://crosspointreader.com/devices https://crosspointreader.com/devices
- boxed 28d ago40% of which are the company the poster complained about :P
- ZeroGravitas 28d agoYes, it was originally written for those devices. It's now branching out to support similar devices from other manufacturers.
- jacknews 28d agoSo who is the original manufacturer of these readers?
- shinycode 28d agoX4 pro launched in July and I could buy it for 89€ now it costs 119€. And I bought the x3 in June for 50€ now it’s 89€. So yeah that’s the strategy
- hasperdi 28d agoI suggest buying M5Stack PaperMono instead. It's an esp32 board with an eink screen and a battery. I bet someone will make an open source firmware for it
- embedding-shape 28d ago> M5Stack PaperMono Is that actually a product intended for consumers though? Looks more like a development board than a product for "normies", like the Xteink stuff.
- JustFinishedBSG 28d agoThey still run the same thirdparty firmware. Seeed Studio has the reTerminal Sticky too. M5 device are cool but they do have that, as ugly as it is useful, functional diagram printed on the back...
- embedding-shape 28d agoCare to link these allegations and substantiated proof/evidence? Not that I don't believe you, but would be nice to read the original source of this, even if it happens to be in another language than English.
- justnoice 28d agoYou need to search for "阅星瞳" on RedNote, which is their official Chinese name, and look at the official statement they posted on April 25 this year. In that statement, they had listed the device's RAM as 128 MB, while the actual usable RAM was only around 400 KB. You can also find plenty of other discussions about the CEO himself and the company's products by searching on RedNote. In fact, RedNote users make up a major part of the brand's customer base in China.
- embedding-shape 28d agoIs it fair to say that your previous comment was based mostly on various individual comments made by individuals on RedNote, rather than some published article from journalists, or investigation, or similar?
- justnoice 28d agoYou're questioning whether a native Chinese speaker somehow misunderstood a discussion written in Chinese on a Chinese social media platform? After a competitor accused them of falsifying product specifications, the company publicly responded by claiming that it was merely a typo and stated that they would not provide compensation. Under Chinese law, however, this kind of false representation can require a refund plus compensation amounting to ten times the purchase price. Their CEO had previously served as a founder or senior executive at several well-known Chinese companies, some of which later failed or suffered from major strategic mistakes. Yet during the early development of XTEINK, the founder concealed much of that problematic history. You can find reporting on it here: https://www.cqnews.net/1/detail/1346418331771338752/web/content_1346418331771338752.html https://www.cqnews.net/1/detail/1346418331771338752/web/cont... You say, "Not that I don't believe you," but at the same time you're treating what I said as though I simply made it up based on a few random comments I happened to see on social media. Come on. The problem here is you, not me. If you are not even capable of searching Chinese websites yourself, then you are in no position to question me about what is being discussed in Chinese.
- phoronixrly 28d ago> including that he had actually been involved in multiple previous ventures with a highly questionable track record Considering Kindle's Bezos who's had a pristine track record?