So cynical! I don't blame you, but being a cynical and pessimistic spectator is easy. Instead of slinging shit you might indulge us with just how you know better. Is it from watching many failures from the sidelines?
It will be tough for them to find investors, the phone industry is a ruthlessly competitive market.
The CEO is very headstrong. That's great when you are an expert in hardware projects, but he's not. In my opinion, they are trying to do too many things, and aren't learning from their mistakes or listening to the advice of others.
The best thing they could do right now to maximize their chances would be to lay off their software team and focus entirely on the hardware. Let the community supply that part of it.
OTOH, I think they'll have trouble attracting that much of a community to sustain the project if they just throw out such an expensive initially useless hardware out there.
But at least people will have something to play with. Better than promisses and sorrys.
HW must be appealing though, even if by being dirt cheap and with plentiful options. But it still takes years for community to produce something useful.
Would this hurt their marketability somehow? Wonder if anyone from there is tuned in here...
I agree that this delay was entirely predictable though. Some time ago when I heard at their Matrix channel that "we're still targeting January" I was all like "wait, what?". A plan that gives you just 2-3 months from sending out devkits to final shipping simply has to fail; I'm glad they didn't stubbornly tried to deliver and just delayed, although I'd rather have them delay to May or June already, as it's IMO still a bit risky.