Ubuntu Edge lowers prices on IndieGogo | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Edge lowers prices on IndieGogo

114 pointsthejosh39 comments

Hi everyone

The last few days have been absolutely incredible -- over $3.5 million in the first 40 hours. We’ve broken records, we’ve attracted the attention of the world, and we’re marching closer and closer to bringing the Ubuntu Edge to life. $32 million is a huge number, and we’ve never danced around this fact. To get there, we’re going to need your help to bring family, friends, fans, and followers to the campaign.

This crowdfunding process has already provided us with a lot of great feedback, especially about our perks -- and we’ve been listening to it all. You told us you want more opportunities to get the Ubuntu Edge at a lower contribution level, so we went back to our spreadsheets and came up with a solution. Today we’re changing our perk levels. We’ll offer a limited number of phones at each level, and as each tier runs out the next ones will be made available, so act quickly to get the best deal!

You’ll only see the first few levels on the campaign page today, but continuing our habit of openness and transparency we want to share the whole plan with you.

Hundreds of you have already contributed $830 for an Ubuntu Edge, but don’t worry. We’ll refund the difference at the end of the campaign so you won’t lose out. We’ll contact you all directly with more information.

We need to keep the campaign momentum going. Please help by sharing the news and, of course, keep pledging!

The Ubuntu Edge team

edit: Link to project: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge

Grumble. They also really need a $40-50 T-Shirt tier. It's amazing how easy it can be to talk yourself into contributing that little bit extra...

Can't agree more: tees are the real boost of crowdfounding.

Seems it is picking up speed again. If they could keep the price below 700$ for everyone, I think it might even go through, but then they'd probably go bankrupt.

As a side-note, it's insane that raising $32 million with crowdfunding actually does not seem that impossible anymore.

For hardware, it's just a matter of value in the user's eye and the risk of failure. Such offer have the most chance to succed and there isn't much risk in the first place.

I see a high value in a unix Os with a very low barrier to write native apps. IOs is a completely closed ecosystem on even has to pay to put a feet in. Android has the cost of java vm overhead and programming overhead. Eclipse makes me sick. Qt creator is much more efficient and productive.

With the possibility to hook a big screen to the device (hopefully a plug&play operation) we could directly program and fiddle with the phone. Though I think we will still need the power of a big cpu to speed up development process.

Hopefully, with the Os, we'll be able to program with our preferred language and use C compiled with Clang when we'll want the most efficient one.

This could be a little revolution and what I'm looking forward with this Ubuntu phone Os.

It's still a bummer that you're limited to basically C++ or QML (a weird hybrid of css and javascript). Why no mobile OSes offer true language choice is a mystery to me.

What do you mean by "limited to c++"? If you can run c++ apps, that means you can write a short wrapper to any language / environment you want and use that for the app itself.

Link to the indiegogo project: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge

What I really want is to be able to buy one without having a PayPal account.

And without paypal and indiegogo fees.

I second this. I made an IndieGoGo account on the first day ready to drop $600 on the phone. But then stopped when I found out that I needed a Paypal account for > $500 contributions. I'm even willing to support some of the newer lower priced tiers but until there is a way to donate without Paypal, my wallet is staying closed.

You can't simply pay with your credit card on Paypal without an account?

Yes you can.

I third this. I experienced the same predicament, and reacted in the same way.

To my sibling comments: no, for purchases over $500, I believe you need a verified PayPal account, which is even more than the usual hassle.

Yeah, before I closed my Paypal account a few years ago, I remember this being the case as well. So I'm not sure how the other commenters are getting away with:

1. Not having to open an account to make > $500 purchases via Paypal.

2. Not having to get your account verified.

Linked: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge

Looks like the new prices are $625, $675, $725 and $830 (USD).

Could you explain why you use indiegogo? It seems to be a very expensive way to fund such a big project. Have you considered alternatives or setting up your own page?

This text doesn't make that much sense since it's missing the pricing table image. You can see the full context at the top of this page currently:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=activity

It looks like they intend to ramp up the price over small batches of 1,250 to provide a more graduated incentive for people to get in early than their previous 1st day only promotion. The first batch ($625 tier) is at 700/1250 sold already. (edit: and sold out < 1 hour later)

Let's see if it makes a difference on the funding speed

http://movebits.net/2013/07/23/ubuntu-edge-funding-level/

For me, that page hasn't updated in ~12 hours. It would be nice if they labeled their axis though, it's really annoying to figure out the scale at the moment.

Since the chart isn't live, here is my hack: http://ownu.net/rate.txt

(Nobody wants to see the code behind this :)

Has someone made available some statistics about average donation / day on crowd funding platforms ? Like what's the average percentage of a project backed after the first day ? after a week ? I only managed to find this article partially related => http://blog.indiegogo.com/2012/02/indiegogo-insight-aim-to-r...

Funded. There was no way I was gonna fork out 860, but did it at 655. Hope someone figures out how to get Windows Phone on the thing!

Funny!

Windows Phone?

Why?

Shouldn't this be a link to the campaign?

HN submissions can't have both text and a link.

Can't they get some companies to order a few hundreds or thousands, too? Maybe some European carriers or something (of course they'd have to guarantee money back if they don't deliver). Ending this campaign successfully would help their PR a lot.

I believe that's the point of that $80k enterprise tier.

If it's a limited edition, how good will device support be after a couple of years ?

If everything from the radio to the bootloader to other device drivers is open source, I don't think keeping it updated will be a problem. Look at old laptops and desktops that still work after slapping a Linux OS onto it.

Where will you go to replace the open-sourced broken glass ?

I've been trying to contribute for over a day now, and I only get the message "We can't process your payment right now, so please try again later. We're sorry for the inconvenience."

In the meantime, the price is rising... Grr.

Good way to probe for most acceptable pricing level before project design is finalized.

Is there HDMI out and bluetooth support? I'm waiting for someone to merge the laptop/desktop/cellphone divide into one unit, this seems like this has the potential to be that unit.

Also will this just work on all carriers?

There's definitely been an uptick in sales. Here's my graph:

http://alexose.com/images/2013-07-24_094402.png

Useful! Can you project the amount raised at the end of the campaign without today's added perks? It looks like $500,000 USD a day from the graph, so only $14.5 million without some bigger incentives? :\

Will it be possible to use device as a phone with Ubuntu as Os or will it have to be running Android to use the device as a phone ?

They're putting a lot of effort into making a touchscreen version of Ubuntu for phones and tablets, so I don't think you'll need to use Android.

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