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Finance Firm Bloomberg Goes In For $80,000 On Ubuntu Edge Project
DW100 writes "Ubuntu has secured a surprise enterprise backer of its $32m Edge smartphone crowd-funding push with corporate powerhouse Bloomberg signing up for the top tier Enterprise 100 package, worth $80,000. Chief technology officer at Bloomberg Shawn Edwards said the firm wanted to give its support to the innovative open source project as it could have real benefits for its IT workforce." Adds reader nk497: "So far the campaign has raised $8.5 million and has two weeks left to run. Individuals can buy the smartphone-cum-PC for $780 at the moment, but Canonical is also offering business bundles of 100 handsets, including a month of support, for $80,000. Bloomberg is the first business to opt for the bundle — but it will get its money back if the project isn't fully funded." Update: 08/08 12:58 GMT by T : One more note: Canonical has dropped the price to $695 for the remainder of the fundraising campaign.
With 14 days to go, it’s time for our biggest announcement yet. From now until the end of the campaign, we’re fixing the price of the Ubuntu Edge at $695! No limited quantities, no more price changes. You wanted a more affordable Edge, and now you’ve got it.
So of course we’re passing those savings on to you. There’s now a single unlimited $695 Ubuntu Edge perk, which comes with a year’s subscription to LastPass Premium and a place on the Founders page. At the end of the campaign, anyone who’s already pledged more than $695 for the phone will be offered a refund of the difference.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Perhaps in five years
that has custom operating software that prevents you from ordering soft drinks?
Bloomberg is the first business to opt for the bundle — but it will get its money back if the project isn't fully funded.
This is no more than free publicity for Bloomberg then. They're pledging to give 80 thousand USD to a project if it gets fully funded. Said project after getting 7 million in the first 24 or 48 hours, has only managed to go up 1 more million in two weeks. And it needs 24 million more in the next two weeks!
Chances of actually having to give the 80 kUSD... close to 0. Free publicity... a lot!
Is Bloomberg's buy-in going to get Ubuntu to add any "custom" features that will help spy on people? http://gizmodo.com/bloomberg-reporters-used-sketchy-terminal-access-to-col-503232014
1. BAM! It's freaking expensive
2. BAM! It's exclusive for supporters and not for sale
3. BAM! Android integrated instead of Standalone
4. BAM! Not full free (open) Software
They should have done a multi tier campain of fully free software compatible devices. low-middle-high end devices. I and surely a lot of other People really want a NON-ANDROID device, it could very well be ugly Ubuntu Unity (uUU) but what's the point if it's not avaible outside of the funding campain?
There are many good looking, high performant, closed, NSA spydevices avaible and there is no reason to invest to build another one. By the time they build it, everyone else probably has the same specs anyway.
Android isn't bad to use with mouse and keyboard, too, and I can chroot in any Linux Distro I want...
Ubuntu Edge simply doesn't bring anything of value to the table. Everyone involved should be ashamed to be such uncreative maggots.
Nobody is "buying" anything. These are donations to a private, for-profit corporation, in the hopes that said corporation will send a phone, if they can and do end up making them.
Ah, fuck it. I really thought that this whole Kickstarter donation thing would go away once people wised up, but I suppose that these donation scams are much like multi-level marketing and other scams... for every people who figures out that it's a scam, there are two more that get sucked into the stupidity. I really wish that I had less of a conscience so that I could take advantage of all of these suckers. It's got to be the simplest, most lucrative scam in history, as far as I can tell.
I don't respond to AC's.
Apart from the free publicity for Bloomberg ( which, at at a $ 80000 ticket, comes in really cheap ), where is BB's hidden agenda ??
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
"Individuals can buy the smartphone-cum-PC"
Using Latin in a place where it's not needed and has no historical ties (as "cum laude" would) is stupid. Using the one Latin word that's also English for "jizz" just makes you look like a moron. Unless you like using video chat for... stickier activities than most people.
Were the following questions by the FSF ever answered?
"Will the Ubuntu Edge versions of both Android and Ubuntu contain or rely on any proprietary software or proprietary firmware?"
"Will the Ubuntu Edge include any Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) software?"
"Will the device's bootloader be free software?"
"Will the device have Restricted Boot, or will users be able to replace the operating system with a free one of their choice?"
"Will Ubuntu Edge include F-Droid, the free software Android application repository, as part of a commitment to promote and recommend only free software?"
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
ME! It's official Al over America *BSD has steadily already aware, *BSD are a pathetic TO HAVE REGULAR has steadily Raise or lower the
The phone will be worth over $1000 when it ships. I am loading up.
Half an hour after I signed up for $780 I received the email telling it's now $695. Normally prices get lower with time, but this is very awkward, the product is not even in the market. There is a big mix up of crowd sourcing and traditional marketing. Now I'm confused as a consumer and Canonical is confused as... wait, what is Canonical now?
That spies on traders terminals?
In that case I think I'll pass.
The lower price is a great deal. It's much more powerful than phones currently on the market and is right in the same price range. I don't really understand why sales have stalled as this is going to be 2-3 years ahead of the market. Either that or it will drive the market to produce better phones. I for one bought 2. I'm surprised a bunch haven't been snapped up to sell on the secondary market, ie thEbay.
That is probably less than what they spend on their office fish tank maintenance in a month.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
isn't qt pretty much ported to android? other than that, you won't buy one in 2015 since this is a campaing only stupid thing. something where support dies right when you hold it in your hand and nobody develops apps for it because nobody actually got it... got it?
Bloomberg, as a financial and inparticular, media firm should be interested in privacy and security.
There isn't a phone out there that has integrity to trade... closest we got was Replicant on a Samsung but the modem had carte blanche to everything so it was imperfect.
So Bloomberg would be a good customer. Any Bloomberg employee who has sensitive info has the possibility of communicating privately.
A blog I run for the wealth
Will it start to stop and frisk minorities now? Bloomberg is totally in love with the idea.
capcatcha: perverts - how appropriate.
If this thing takes off Apps could be written in C/C++ or JS instead of Cocoa or Java. Probably Python down the road?
You seem to be pointing towards Android by mentioning Java. The thing is you can develop in C for Android devices, you merely need to get the NDK. Sure, portions of the UI stuff have better support for Java, but if you really want to you can write an entire Android application in C.
$695 is still way too high.
We have an unproven device here. Nobody knows how well this thing will work or how well it'll be supported. People are willing to play around with things, but not at this price point. The OUYA is $99. That's worth taking a risk on. The Raspberry Pi is $35. Those little Android "Mini-PC's" are about $45. Those are cheap enough to play around on.
The market seems to have spoken and the price point for a device to play around with seems to be about $50-100. Much above that we're getting into "real money" territory, and people aren't so quick to gamble on a device there. They want solid support, but more importantly they're going to want it to be out already so that they can read reviews and such to see how well it works.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If they had money to burn, they should have set it on fire. More efficient that way. Ubuntu == shitty spyware based on a shitty distro
You are delusional. Add the cost of the parts (even bulk) and compare.
$238/piece ...and maybe one or two Foxconn suicides.
$695 is still way too high.
There are many ways to set price. There's a range between cost (nobody will build it for less) and the maximum value someone can get out of it (no point in buying something for more). You don't show in any way it's outside this. The real question is the value that you can get out of it. That's what should decide how much you can pay for it. You need to compare it with other similar devices, not a bunch of non wireless enabled development boards.
In my view the device is new, but the fundamentals of the value are something we have seen before. I guess there are three devices to look at; OpenMoko, the Nokia N900 and the Nokia N9. There are a bunch of things which would work on those devices which are impractical on other devices. Here are some ideas off the top of my head; maybe other people can add theirs:
Compare these ideas with the closed competition. Windows phones, where you can't even really jail-break, are the worst it is true. iOS phones are also pretty limited (software from the app store only unless you get a developer key) but even Android phones which are supposed to be "open" end up as garbage here. Instead of having the full GNU/Linux you are limited to just small bits re-implemented by Google.
If you want to develop new personal device or wireless network ideas, this is going to be worth thousands of dollars to you. Even if you just want a device which does what you tell it to then it's likely to be worth hundreds more.
If you aren't a developer; you don't have any ideas about how to do something with wireless devices and you don't need a portable computing device, then you may well be right, it's not worth it to you. For a person who just uses it as a phone/PC, the competition would be something like a Samsung S4 - on sale for something like $600. In that case your questions about the level of testing would really matter. For most of the people who read this site, though, it's a chance to get a device which will be able to do things no other current device can do and that can really be worth much more than Canonical are asking for it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Well, I just tried to get in on this, but after arguing with the site for an hour I finally had to boot a special VM with no network security of any kind before it would even let me try to send money.
Then I am confronted with PayPal.
No toy, no matter how cool, is worth that. I wonder how much that has cost them?
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
You make the mistake of assuming that just because the parts cost a certain amount that the public should buy it.
If the sum total value of the parts is above what the market would normally pay then they didn't design the device well. I could build a minivan with a V12 engine and slap an insane pricetag on it but that doesn't mean that its a good value.
If their hardware requires a purchase price anywhere near $700 then they should have scaled it back a little. I'll concede that this thing needs a cellular antenna and a touchscreen so it'll have to cost a bit more than the devices I specified, but to have a chance it should be well under half what they're asking.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain