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Comment by jorde | Hacker News Reader

While the Phonebloks concept got a lot of hype, I haven't seen any mention of Modu, an Israel based phone manufacturer (startup). They introduced the first modular phone but it wasn't never a success and the company went bankrupt in 2011. Interestingly enough, Google bought their patents and now we have a modular phone concept from Google owned Motorola.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modu

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Reminds me of the quote [1]: "There's very little difference between being early and being wrong."

Sometimes, you have the right idea, but the world isn't ready for it, yet. Appears to be the case for Modu?

edit: found quote reference. [1] Herb Greenberg, 27 Apr 1986, Chicago Tribune. <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-04-27/business/86013...

That's a good find, but when I think about that quote with technology adoption, I remember Joe Kraus's great "Confessions of a Startup Addict" from Startup School, where he said "Being early feels the same as being wrong -- you're dead!"

http://www.brendonwilson.com/blog/2006/04/30/joe-kraus-confe...

Probably my favorite startup speech, but no longer online anywhere due to lossage from Omnisio and the YC Infogami.

Case in point: A whole generation of tablets were born and died around '99-2003 (I worked on one through '99). In retrospect it is easy to see why they were too early, but working on one it was easy to be seduced by the idea and not see how badly the limitations imposed by the technology available compromised the end-result.

Thank you! I was thinking about the same thing during the hype and could not remember the name of the company.

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