Ubuntu Edge fails to raise goal | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Edge fails to raise goal

indiegogo.com

51 pointsmariusz33173 comments

Speculation: they didn't want the money, they wanted the buzz.

They didn't even have all their parts picked out, did they? But they'll be able to use this for leverage with manufacturers/investors/whatever.

12 million in "sales" in a month with no marketing (or product)!

What if they picked a goal they purposely thought they wouldn't reach to test the market on a kickstarting platform and prevent a third-party marketplace from taking a percentage of sales?

I liked the idea, but I refuse to use a phone without a landscape physical keyboard.

Virtual keyboards are awful. All of them. They take too much screen real state away from me, yet they're small enough to make me struggle when trying to write something complex like my secure password...

Swype and similar options are not an option either, because I write in different languages, and no matter how good the text prediction technology gets, the software is unable to predict in which language I'm trying to write, especially with short words. (I understand this is an unrealistic expectation, but still, expecting a person like me to consider this alternative is an unrealistic expectation).

And I prefer not to say something about Voice Input...

I swear I tried different options, but I simply can't... Is a physical keyboard too much to ask? :(

Likewise. My N950 has an incredible keyboard -- it even have a proper control key -- but its operating system is completely dead in the water. There don't seem to be any modern Android phones that run on GSM and have physical keyboards. The Phonon Q has its SIM card soldered to the phone. I just ordered a Galaxy S Relay off ebay, which is last year's hardware and its physical keyboard is supposed to be kind of bad anyway. The state of physical keyboards in phones these days is terrible. The [overpriced] Blackberry Q10 is tempting for its hardware, and the fact that it comes with an Android runtime, but I don't really want to run QNX or have a smartphone running a bunch of obscure HTTP servers with pf managing the security between them -- or whatever bizarre model they're using.

I wish Shuttleworth would have added the physical keyboard and advertised it as the natural progression of the N900/N950. I would have purchased a few of them.

It seems like the percentage of people who want a physical keyboard on their phones is good deal smaller than those who don't. So it makes sense to cater to the majority initially and then if that's successful to bring out a physical keyboard variant. There's no point in saying that you would have bought the Edge if only it had a physical keyboard. You are not the target market.

Why don't you make a HN poll and find out? Link the poll to here. Smartphones a) should b) should not have a physical keyboard Or something like that!

How about those phones that can slide and open to show a physical keyboard, probably too costly and error prone I guess

I have a Nokia N86, I love it, and use it alongside my android "phone" (which is basically a tablet for my use case).

My ideal design would be an Android-powered Blackberry Torch format (with a slightly larger screen).

There is already a myriad of mini keyboards on ebay, although I haven't used any but some of them look sufficiently good to use along side a smartphone. In the future I think they will improve to the point where people who want a physical keyboard will just buy it separately.

Finally, someone who really gets it. Now our last hope for the next N9x0 is Jolla.

Yep. It remains to be seen whether or not they release SailfishOS for the N950. I sure hope so.

How did you get an N950? And also, why dead in the water? It's still the most open and upgradeable mobile OS I've ever seen on a real device.

The OS is closed source, so I can't fix long standing show stopper bugs myself, and Nokia has ceased all development on it.

There's a language button right on my Nexus 4 keyboard for fast-switching between languages.

I would never need to write in more than one language in the same message, so it's as simple as 2 taps to switch the entire phone dictionary. I'm not sure how it could get any easier?

  I would never need to write in more than one language in the same message.

Bon Appetite! Wait, are those quesadillas of surimi?

Ok, this was an exaggerated example using French, English, Spanish and Japanese (although most people would consider the message as English only due to the fact that the words/concepts don't exist in English).

But being honest I find myself often writing messages that combine words of different languages because the words/concepts doesn't exist in the language I'm writing.

In the past I didn't even had to think about it, because I simply wrote what I wanted to write, but the fact that I'm forced to struggle with text prediction has made me put more attention in those details.

I often use english words in Japanese messages I write, and writing roman characters in the Japanese interface is a miserable experience. I'm toggling back and forth pretty often.

Considering the limited options I was afraid what I'd have to choose from after my HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2 in the US IIRC). But since Swiftkey I enjoy typing on a screen. And I regularly write in English and German, often in the same message. It's faster and with less errors than typing on a physical (mobile) keyboard. The only gripe I have left is the lack of space but there is probably nothing one can do there.

But then I'm only writing short messages on my phone and nothing longer than maybe 2 paragraphs.

Blackberry user by chance? I was checking out the Blackberry Q5 and it has a roomy keyboard, along with a touchscreen OS.

I've never had an issue with virtual keyboards, and in fact preferred them, but the Q5 has changed my thinking.

Q5: http://global.blackberry.com/smartphones/blackberry-q5.html

I am genetically designed to never use a Blackberry.

Not joking, my hands and fingers are big... I can print a document using a single hand in a keyboard that doesn't have a Right Ctrl key using my thumb and pinky.

They probably cost too much and limits screen size. A bit too much to ask.

I can't write well on my touch screen too (and it is note 2) but I don't miss a key pad, screen size is a lot important for me.

Maybe web sites will start using touch screen friendly authentication methods along with a regular password (like that connect to dot screen)? I hate entering my passwords on my phone too

For all the other benefits of the phone, I'd live with that. At least you 'can in theory' dock the phone and then use a 'standard' keyboard.

Placing a physical keyboard on the device would probably make it weaker and thicker/bigger.

Those that like typing on physical keyboard give MessagEase a thumbs up for touch input.

I wonder if that has to do with the current "race to the bottom" for smartphone prices. Razer thin margins would force manufacturers to cut any parts they can, since most users won't pay a price premium for the keyboard.

SwiftKey for Android has worked really well for me when typing in different languages

That's getting more limiting all the time.

They work well for most of us. Consumers have expressed a pretty clear preference for large screen size over any inconvenience of virtual keyboards.

The problem is that unlike most other electronics-related branches I can think of there's actually not so much diversity in smartphones. It's like the product is directed at 100% of the market while only, say, 90% of the market really wants it. The others are left in the cold, but buy anyway since there's no other option.

Compare this to e.g. audio equipment which I consider a more 'normal' market system. There's the typical consumer stuff, there's the more professional stuff and then in the high end professional devices there's even subclasses. This seems completely absent in the cellphone market, where every player just follows the rest. At least. that is my impression.

That's the sad part of this story, I'm pessimistic enough to predict that in the future only bootleg android vendors will offer what I'm looking for, it sucks to be in a niche that manufacturers don't care about anymore...

$32 mil is a lot to aim for, but their goal was to see if there is an marketplace for cutting edge technology where innovation can really thrive. If you lowered the threshold then it starts to lose what they set out to prove - is the industry too scared to innovate because they will lose their market share.

They have proved there is a market for £12 mil on a product that is only a concept at this stage. Had this product been in stores today I believe they would have sold far more than $32 mil, both from the immediate availability but also increased exposure.

I am looking forward to seeing the Ubuntu phones come. It shouldn't be seen as a failure as to Canonical, it was an experiment. They tested to see if people would go wild for something like this and now they know that people do want it, but it's not as straightforward as they now need to get the mainstream manufacturers on board and sell a product, not a concept.

At least that's my take on it.

I don't know. I believe that "phones that can replace a computer" are years away still. So you are left with a Linux phone, and I'd bet the Jolla people to get it right. Also, I haven't tried Ubuntu Touch but the little I've seen of Unity hasn't really blown me away.

I agree. Is this a phone that I can:

1. Hold to my ear when a call arrives, without unplugging the video cable to my screen?

2. Wave around without fear of it falling and shattering to bits, taking most of my digital life with it (unless I'm using cloud/NSA)?

I hope this isn't unfair but..

Does this mean that Canonical either don't believe enough in Ubuntu Edge to raise the $20m difference themselves or that Canonical do believe in it but are not able to raise $20m?

I have to admit I am skeptical about the commitment of a large, established, company to a product that they are not willing to put their own skin in the game to develop.

However, I can understand and have participated in crowd-funding for smaller companies who are trying to play a bigger game.

I just wonder which one Canonical is.

I believe the point of the campaign was not to raise the $32m they needed, they have enough money to do it themselves. The point was to prove to the mobile/carrier industry that there is $32m worth of demand for a change in the way the industry works.

With $12m raised, I think they made a significant step towards that, even if they didn't finish it.

You're assuming that the $32m would have been enough to fund the project entirely, but that's not necessarily the case.

Imagine a scenario where Canonical budgeted the project at $50m, deciding that they'd be willing to invest up to $18m of their own money in addition to the Indiegogo cash.

In this case, they would have plenty of skin in the game, and yet they wouldn't be willing to go even further to shore up the weak campaign results.

They would be amortizing the R&D over a small number of phones, and their goals are ambitious for a company with no hardware experience. Even in the circumstance of a fully funded campaign, the project would have real potential to be an endless money pit of delays and frustration.

It would have had to been because:

"The Ubuntu Edge is an exclusive production run, available only through Indiegogo."

Unless they want to lose money or plan to monetize some other way.

I don't think it's unfair, IIRC they were quite explicit about the fact that they were using crowdfunding as a way to measure the market. They would quite definitely have had to "put their own skin in the game" (I want to know what games you've been playing) alongside the crowd funds, but now they know that there isn't a keen enough market outside of nerds and they haven't wasted their money. As a nerd I'm disappointed that the product won't make it to the market, but as a businessman I think they've found a sane way to determine what punters are prepared to unfold their wallets for.

Not those sort of games:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skin_in_the_game

Thanks! It's not a phrase I'd previously encountered, and I love this sort of word wrangling.

"Does this mean that Canonical either don't believe enough in Ubuntu Edge to raise the $20m difference themselves or that Canonical do believe in it but are not able to raise $20m?"

Given that Mark is a billionaire, he could put that amount of money with just a telephone call. In fact he has done that with Ubuntu as more than this amount has been given to Ubuntu by him over the years.

They were just testing the waters with this project. Mark always wanted to make an Ubuntu laptop so Ubuntu Edge does not surprise me. But the project has to sustain itself.

Entrepreneurs have this concept of "pivot": Mark last Mark's words: "and we’ve learned a lot of invaluable lessons about crowdfunding. ". I certainly believe they will pivot with what they learned somewhat in the future.

Yeah I was hopping on at least an extension of the campaign. Would have bought one. O well in the end I think it is better that a established manufacture releases a Ubuntu phone (I hope based on the edge) than that Canonical is handling warranty and all that :)

how much does canonical make in profits per year? i don't think enough to spend its capital to enter a new market, on a space they have little experience in.

crowdfunding would atleast give them an idea on the demand for Edge, and help generate buzz in the process. of course, if they were confident enough that there was demand for Edge, they would've funded it themselves.

I asked a few developer-related questions about it in multiple places, but never got any answers. I might've bought it otherwise.

What did you ask? I've been trying some Ubuntu Touch development recently and I found documentation for it to be ok.

Questions like these. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6181597

1) Yes. It is normal Ubuntu. You'd have to install some extra packages. 2) Yes, you can execute code in Desktop or Mobile - how you deliver the interface though would probably be done by either HTML or C++/QT Quick. 3) Yes, yes and yes. 4) It is a single environment with multiple interfaces. Plug it into a monitor and Unity Next will switch layout to Desktop - Plug it into a TV and it'll switch layout to Ubuntu for TV. All the underlying code is the same.

Ah well - at least they tried and who knows, maybe not having to take on the hassle of hardware design and production will lead to a better Ubuntu release for existing top-end phones.

And let's not forget that there's also a small linux desktop distro called Ubuntu. Maybe they could try and improve that? But that's just crazy right? Who still uses a laptop these days? Nobody!

You could try:

print count(nsaQuery.region('global').device('laptop').activity('-24hr'))

;)

Unrealistic goal, crazy prize for specs that should be widely available when phone is finally shipped after almost a year. I wasn't that surprising :)

You totally got it

I don't need another phone but I like the project, so I gave my money once it became clear that they're not going to reach the $32 million goal.

How IndieGogo works is that they charge the money immediately but refund it if the campaign doesn't reach its goal. So basically I lent $725 to IndieGogo for a week. Expressing support for Ubuntu in "real money" won't get cheaper than this!

So IndieGogo works by pocketing the interest rather than you. Not a bad business model.

Or taking a nice 4%[1] cut if it does succeed.

[1] http://www.indiegogo.com/how-pricing-works-on-indiegogo

Even better. Interest and commission.

I genuinely wish I'd thought of it.

Genuine off-topic question: why didn't they go through Kickstarter, to potentially reach more users (although a $32M goal is huge)?

I believe Kickstarter requires more upfront for hardware projects (prototype, etc)

They had a design prototype, that might have been enough. I suspect pricing might have been a part of it, after all, on $32m, even a 1% price difference is a very large amount.

I'm sure these 1% can be negotiated when you bring a 32M$ project.

kickstarter takes a 5% cut, and indiegogo takes a 4% cut. the difference is $320,000, no small amount!

i don't think kickstarter would've brought in anymore investors than putting it on indiegogo -- atleast not 320k worth. the edge probably already saturated to the set of users that would have crowdfunded for it.

I think they get to keep the money they raised even though they didn't meet the goal.

They announced all payments will be refunded by PayPal within 5 days.

> "We’ve been assured by Paypal that all refunds will be processed within five working days."[1]

[1] http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=activity#act...

They don't, the campaign is Fixed Funding - once it failed to meet the target all backers got a full refund http://www.indiegogo.com/how-pricing-works-on-indiegogo

No they don't, it was marked as "fixed funding" which is explained here:

http://www.indiegogo.com/how-pricing-works-on-indiegogo

Looked nice but for me it was just too expensive. I don't pay 700 bucks for a phone. Even the OS is interesting and everything but in the end it's just a phone for me.

I hope they try again maybe not as high as 32million but like 18million maybe next year but really I would like the phone to be manufactured not just a limited run

Nexus 5 I hope we been able to run the software they had planned for Ubuntu Edge. If thats true I would buy a Nexus 5 until they make a Ubuntu Edge

raised just over 40% of their goal - $12,809,906 / $32M.

was certainly an interesting experiment

edit: s/raised/were pledged/

Indiegogo take the money and then refund if unsuccessful, so in a way they did raise the money, at least people were willing to part with it immediately.

Did they actually expect to raise 32 million dollars? None the less for a $700 smart phone...

Can't say I am surprised. I wish ffos had done this.

What now?

Firefox OS!

I seriously doubt FFOS can do something like the Ubuntu Edge in the next 2-3 commercial cycles.

Canonical has been working for years on polishing a ARM distribution, and FFOS is just starting now and the amount of work needed to use a FFOS device as a computer is (today) non-trivial; plus you'll need some support from at least a hardware vendor, and carrier interested in selling the device/having the device in its own network

Not sure about this. Sure FFOS isn't perfect, but I have a ZTE Open in my desk right now... for me that's way ahead of Ubuntu Edge.

It's too soon to tell, but looks like FFOS is happening. Right now.

I'm looking into doing a preorder of Geeksphone Peak+, which is their third model.

Sure Geeksphone is more of a developer phone, but you also have ZTE Open as reidrac mentioned.

Can I by a phone with Ubuntu Touch preinstalled?

If Ubuntu Touch can make it, even better! I don't want that other Android crap.

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