Am 04.06.2007 um 18:27 schrieb el jefe delito:
Regardless of where the hardware and software are right now, I
would imagine that they both will be further along come release
date. But, outside of this community and the few people that
remember us telling them about the FIC Neo1973 and the OpenMoko
platform, who knows about this phone or platform?
Slashdot and NYTimes and many other sites have articles about the
Apple iPhone, but very rarely is the Neo1973 mentioned. We, the
OpenMoko community, are interested in these articles too (I would
imagine), and yet no one ever posts a comment about the Neo1973
(except me, it seems). If we don't get the mainstream press to
write about the Neo1973, we (or FIC) are going to have a difficult
time selling devices and getting out there. If they (press) won't
write about the Neo1973, the least we can do is mention the Neo1973
in the reader comments, with a link to the wiki.
Here is one such article from just this weekend. The iPhone will
be getting a lot of coverage, and as different as the two
philosophies may be, the average person on the street will see the
two phones as very similar. If we have a great feature comparison,
why not let people know??
http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/fever-builds-for-iphone-
anxiety-too/
I hope that we can start to create some buzz about this product!
Being open, being able to work with multiple service providers,
being unlocked, being cheaper, being higher-resolution... all of
these are benefits that we must PROMOTE. The quicker we can post
on an article, the higher on the Comments list we will be and the
more reads that comment will get. No one reads Comment #154267....
Thoughts?
Ok, let's write down some htoughts:
Apple is most probably spending several 10 or even 100 Millions of $$
$ for advertizing and distributing (working) devices to promotors and
multiplicators. And when looking at the "single carrier" policy of
the iPhone, I get the impression that the main value to operators is
a unique marketing tool. And all operators want to use it for their
promotion purposes. But cleverly enough just one in the US carriers
did succeed and probably a single other will in EU (at least that is
what I read from the news).
Then, some of the press coverage comes simply from the fact that
Apple is a public company which requires them (and others) to publish
anything which influences the value of their shares. Such news are
automatically spread through the financial news. And why should they
compare it with OpenMoko? Whose existence is very interesting for us
but not for their readers?
OpenMoko on the other hand is a project made of volunteers (besides
FIC). Driven like many other Open Source projects. And - there are
"just" developer devices to show. It does not produce announcements
so interesting for the end users so that carriers want to have it
definitively in their offer and promote it. And, there is no large
Marketing budget (dho wants to donate to that?). OSS marketing has
different rules...
When comparing with the iPhone buzz, it is IMHO wise to wait a little
until the Lion has stopped roaring. Then, your lower voice will be
heared better again...
OpenMoko/Neo did have a lot of press coverage when originally
announced. But now it needs to deliver something. So the most
important news we need is that there is something tangible for
everybody.
-- hns
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