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Ubuntu Edge Draws Nearly $13M, But Falls Short of Indiegogo Goal
Nerval's Lobster writes "The crowdfunding campaign to build an Ubuntu-powered smartphone has fallen short of its ambitious goal. Canonical, which works with the open-source community to support Ubuntu worldwide, decided to fund its Ubuntu Edge smartphone via crowdfunding Website Indiegogo. The funding goal was set at $32 million, and at first it looked as if the project had enough momentum to actually succeed: within the first 24 hours of the project's July 22 launch, some $3.45 million had poured in. But that torrent of cash soon slowed to a trickle. In the end, the campaign managed to amass $12,809,906 by its August 21 closing. Nonetheless, Canonical did its best to put a brave face on the situation. 'While we passionately wanted to build the Edge to showcase Ubuntu on phones, the support and attention it received will still be a huge boost as other Ubuntu phones start to arrive in 2014,' the organization wrote in a posting. 'Thousands of you clearly want to own an Ubuntu phone and believe in our vision of convergence, and rest assured you won't have much longer to wait.'" Update: 08/22 16:14 GMT by T : Oops -- headline edited to reflect that the Edge was an Indiegogo project, rather than Kickstarter.
Using a crowd-funded campaign like this gives Canonical a very good idea about just how much interest there is in the phone essentially for free...and if they met that goal they'd be all the better.
No one trusts Canonical outside of the die-hard Ubuntu fanboys. Canonical forks everything due to their NIH syndrome. They released the buggiest, ugliest and most uselessly incoherent Desktop imaginable (Unity) and then sold their userbase to Amazon.
The Edge could be the greatest thing since sliced bread, I still wouldn't give them my money.
I hate to say it but Ubuntu has missed the mobile boat. It would have been nice to have an open source alternate to Android and iOS. I use Android but I've got to say, it gives me the creeps the more I read about Google and how they are mining our data with seemingly no regard for their customers.
What are you smoking?
Smartphones will likely replace desktops when docked at some point.
The smartphone is severely limited in its interface, its power, its scope, its precision, and its visuals.
No. Smartphones are limited in their intended uses sure, but the hardware is very capable of general purpose work. Smartphones are increasing in power at a much faster rate than desktop and laptop machines.
PCs have no such limitations.
Wat.
There is still a desktop market, and always will be; don't let the naysayers clutching their toy phones tell you any differently.
Desktops are cheaper, but outside of very specialised applications, laptops are good enough for most uses. In fact, modern smartphones are good enough.
This is your only hope now that we've proved that betting the farm on a toy device is not a smart idea.
Nobody was betting the farm on this. It was just an idea. People probably said the same thing about personal computers (vs mainframes) back in the 70s/80s.
which is totally what she said
I was totally with you up until you said KDE...
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
IMO, the goal was deliberately set too high to meet. Now all the money goes back to the donators.
Huge amounts of free advertising, hype generation and likely leverage in existing negotiations with hardware vendors, care of the interest $13m worth of donations the "chumps" who bought into it loaned to Indiegogo for a couple months.
Smart. Very smart.
A netbook isn't good enough for web browsing? The only reason I can't use a phone or tablet for 100% of my internet use, is that some youtube videos aren't allowed "on mobile" for some stupid reason.
I used a netbook as my primary development and home usage machine for several months, simply to squash my ego somewhat (before that I'd always gone for the most powerful machines I could). It was actually surprisingly usable. For doing more engineering oriented work I did need to remote into more powerful computers though, so now I have an ultrabook.
which is totally what she said
I think Canonical's mistake was limiting the campaign to a single month. I am sure there were a lot of people that wanted the phone but did not have the liquid cash to purchase one with only a month notice. If it was a three month campaign, I could see them reaching their goal.
Considering that hasn't happened with laptops yet, I'd be very surprised to see it happen with phones, at least in the near future. Just like with laptops and desktops, just because you can mostly get the same performance in a much smaller form factor doesn't mean everyone's going to want to pay the premium for the smaller size.
the key difference is laptops are big, heavy and unwieldy and nobody likes to lug them around for the sake of it. Since you are going to have a smartphone with you at all times either way, why not give it even more utility? Most people don't have elaborate needs that require full blown PC monster, but would love to have access to all their shit wherever they go. If the phone can provide that, great.
In some places it has. For instance, my mom is in a job that often requires her to work from home. So her company gave her a laptop that is secured and can access their network at her house. At work, she puts the laptop in a dock that is connected to a monitor: dual monitor workstation. When she goes home she takes the laptop with her to use at home if needed. It really is much more efficient and cheaper than giving her a desktop for work and a laptop for home use.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
*Indiegogo. Whatever.
Actually it does matter a great deal. A key difference is what happens to the money if the project is not funded to the goal level. On kickstarter if the project misses its goal, no money changes hands. On indiegogo campaigns can be set up as "Flexible Funding" and the hosts get whatever is pledged (minus 9% for fees).
From the Kickstarter page:
Why is Kickstarter funding all-or-nothing?
On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. This way, no one is expected to develop a project with an insufficient budget, which sucks. Remember you set your own funding goal, so aim to raise the minimum amount you'll need to create your vision. Projects can always raise more than their goal, and often do.
From the Indiegogo FAQ
What if I don't reach my funding goal?
If your campaign is set up as Flexible Funding, you will be able to keep the funds you raise, even if you don't meet your goal. If your campaign is set up as Fixed Funding, all contributions will be returned to your funders if you do not meet your goal. Flexible Funding campaigns that meet their goal are only charged 4% as our platform fee, whereas campaigns that do not meet their goal are charged 9%.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Considering that hasn't happened with laptops yet, I'd be very surprised to see it happen with phones, at least in the near future. Just like with laptops and desktops, just because you can mostly get the same performance in a much smaller form factor doesn't mean everyone's going to want to pay the premium for the smaller size.
While it hasn't completely happened with laptops, it has to a great extent. At my office, most people get assigned laptops. 80% of the time, they are attached to a keyboard/mouse/monitor. The only people I know who buy desktops at home tend to be gamers or developers. Everyone else buys laptops. So no, they may never _completely_ replace desktops, but they might for the average user.
Good graphics cards are big. Most people don't need them, true, but PC gaming is still very much alive - Diablo 3 has sold about 15 million copies. That's about a half _billion_ dollars right there, for one game.
Sure, your converged phone won't replace a gaming rig for hardcore gamers, but not everyone games, and not everyone who does does so on the PC.
People have been predicting the death of the desktop for decades, whether due to consoles, laptops, mobiles, whatever. It's never going to happen while good graphics cards and processors need a lot of cooling, and therefore are big.
Who's talking about death of the desktop? Desktop is useful for some people. But again, not everyone games on the PC, strange as it may seem to you. With 16GB of ram on my laptop, I could easily do all my development work on my laptop, once attached to a bigger screen and keyboard.
The only reason laptops haven't taken over from desktops is that you can't make a laptop do what a desktop does for a similar price, and in some cases not at all. Good luck getting similar performance from a phone.
Newsflash: laptops HAVE taken over desktops, in the sense that more laptops are sold than desktops, by about a factor 2 in 2012 http://www.inquisitr.com/76157/tablets-to-overtake-desktop-sales-by-2015-laptops-will-still-reign/, and that's excluding netbooks. Why? because performance is good enough for most people. Because the price differential is not quite as big as it used to be, and is worth it for many people in exchange for the portability. Tablets and netbooks are each also moving a comparable number of units to desktops. Again, they're good enough for many uses for many people.
Give it another couple iternations in performance, storage and battery improvements, and phones will be good enough for most people too, and will just need a bigger screen and keyboard to be usable for running most desktop applications, except for high-GPU users like games, photoshop, etc.
It's gotten to the point where it's almost odd for me to see a desktop now. At my office only a few people still have desktops because they're not up for a replacement yet. Those that are get a laptop. I've got a laptop now that sits docked most of the time, connected to my external mouse/keyboard and dual monitors. Same thing at home - my laptop replaced my desktop, but when it's time to do Real Work it gets connected to my external mouse/keyboard and dual monitors. Aside from serious gaming I don't see anyone buying desktops anymore, and I can't wait until the day when my phone can be docked just like my laptop and run real apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, and even a full browser rather than the mobile touch-friendly version.