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CrunchPad Inc. Formed With 14 Employees In Singapore
- planck 17y agoI think Arrington is vastly overestimating the number of people who will actually buy a CrunchPad. It will cost more than $300, be too big to be portable, but too crippled (no keyboard, no OS, no file storage, etc.) to be anything more than a toy.
- vaksel 17y agohe has more than 3.2 million people subscribing to the techcrunch rss feed, so the actual number of people who read techcrunch is huge. And the crunchpad will profit from the network effect. people said the same thing about ipod, iphone and other apple products, as long as you have a following, you can sell anything at any price
- tvon 17y agoYou sound like a Verizon executive.
- nir 17y agoI doubt the kind of following Apple has - people spending thousands of dollars on its products, sticking with them even when their market share was marginal etc - is comparable to people regularly reading a blog. So far, other "A list" web celebs ventures have shown that, after the initial hype, they succeed or fail based on their product's worth.
- pcc 17y agoI'm not saying this isn't so -- but reading this kind of statement always reminds me of the many entrepreneurs that do end up being successful despite everyone saying it would never work.
- gommm 17y agoI don't know it depends on the price point but if it's 300$ I'll probably buy it... Seems like a fun piece of hardware...
- axod 17y agoGeeks who like buying fun hardware are a really really small market.
- axod 17y agoIt's sure to be as successful as seesmic.
- acangiano 17y agoYour remark fails to consider that most successful entrepreneurs experience failure in their lifetime. It's part of the game.
- axod 17y agoAgreed, however, I think everyone could see instantly that seesmic was a dud. As most can see that the Crunchpad is a dud. IMHO the idea of the Crunchpad is something that has already been tried many many times before, with the net result that there simply isn't a large market for such devices.
- crescendo 17y agoI think the point is that for every wildly successful company out there, there was surely an early group of naysayers who could see instantly that it was a dud. Arrington might fail here, but you have to give the guy a lot of credit for how he has moved forward on this thing.
- axod 17y agoYup. Credit for moving forward with a bad idea that is sure to fail. Wake up. It's half a laptop. - no keyboard, no protection for the screen - no way to stand the screen up so you can view it - etc etc etc It's about the same price as a netbook :/
- olefoo 17y agoI don't think this is that clearly a dud. If it comes in at a decent price point and has a convenient charging stand I could easily see one in my living room. I think it's more likely that the market wasn't ready for such a thing. Like netbooks, which were not possible at a price point that made them attractive to consumers until a year and a half ago, when they suddenly emerged as a market category. But hey, the great thing about being an entrepreneur is that you are responsible for estimating the market conditions and executing credibly.
- andrewljohnson 17y agoI doubt TechCrunch has the expertise to make this thing as good as say, the Kindle. I know people who work at Amazon, and that company has really good engineers. I can't imagine TechCrunch does. Arrington is just a Jeff Bezos wannabe, but he's missing the point. He thinks hardware+media=money. But it needs to be good hardware!
- dabeeeenster 17y agoThe Kindle is vastly more complex than the Crunchpad. EInk, DRM store, mobile network hardware, all sorts. The crunchpad is basically a laptop without a keyboard, a touch screen and some custom Linux software. It's really not that complex. Most of it is just assembling components and writing some relatively straightforward software, unless I'm missing something? Say what you like about him, but Arrington is doggedly going after this thing...
- boundlessdreamz 17y agoThe hardware design is being outsourced to a company specializing in it. IMHO it has a better chance of being better designed than kindle. By the way, Amazon has good software engineers. I don't know if they even have hardware engineers on their payroll. So arrington and amazon are kind of on equal footing on talent [except for the money that can be pumped into development].
- wallflower 17y agoI have to applaud Michael Arrington for going out of his comfort zone and taking on a sizeable project that is not guaranteed to be successful but if fairly successful, will make a small impact on the tech industry, rather than just reporting on it (like he does now).
- MaysonL 17y agoI hope that it's successful enough that he can come out with a 2.0 with a PixelQi screen.
- officiallyrad 17y ago"In four years, Michael Arrington has gone from knowing relatively little about the Internet..." "In 2000, he co-founded Achex, an online payments company, which was acquired the following year by First Data Corp. for $32 million. He also worked at a startup in London, founded and ran two companies in Canada, and was chief operating officer at RazorGator, a ticket reseller." After taking time off, a friend suggested starting a company and, in an effort to educate himself about the Internet..." So he didn't know anything about the internet but somehow started and sold a web payments company and was later COO of an online ticket company?
- vitocorleone 17y agoApple buys parts in bulk so they can get huge discounts. if Arrington can't do the same, he won't profit from this.
- alain94040 17y agoWhy is this comment downvotted so much? I happen to believe that it's the key to the question. People just don't realize the buying power of Apple. If you can build the CrunchPad for $200, you'd have a huge success. If you build it for $500, it's dead on arrival. If it has the next gen CPU, it's a success. If it runs with last year low power CPU, it's dead. Plus you need great software on top of course, but the hardware can kill you.
- Keyframe 17y agolight and thin touchscreen pdf reader / web browser with durable battery and wifi is something I always wanted - I like where this is going.
- johnnybgoode 17y agoThe problem is price. The estimate keeps going up. I think it's over $300 now.
- greyman 17y agoEven if it is less than $300, how much less? I can have netbook for less than $400... I like the idea of CrunchPad, but still for the future I am thinking about paying more and buy a netbook with touchscreen - then the only advantage of CrunchPad I can think of is a shorter boot time. Still, all the best to CrunchPad!
- srwh 17y agoReally like the [obvious?] crunchpad product. I really expect a new generation of products cloning iPhones, Kindles because Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia are sleeping under its comfort zones. Cheers to ASUS too!
- raheemm 17y agoHere's some pics - http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/09/crunchtablet-hits-the-net-a-little-early/ http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/09/crunchtablet-hits-the-n... Here's the original post from TC that got this started - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-web-tablet-help-us-build-it/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/21/we-want-a-dead-simple-w... I wonder if they are still planning to keep the hardware design specs open-source - that would be pretty cool Edit: here is a video demo - looks cool! http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/09/crunchtablet-hits-the-net-a-little-early/* http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/04/09/crunchtablet-hits-the-n...