Sunday, April 17, 2011

Notion Ink Adam Tablet - I wanted it to succeed...

I've been a lurker for a long time. Been following NI since pretty much the early days when news of the product and the blog came out.

The latest post in Notion Ink's Blog finally made my jaw drop with incredulity. This company will die soon unless it brings in someone with a modicum of sense into the management. If I were a VC looking to invest, I’d be very worried right now – or if I’m determined to invest, I’d bring in real manager.

Startups need to heed one mantra - "do one thing and do it really well", and NI needs to keep its mind fully focused on just that - deliver a great functioning tablet now, even if to a small number of initial customers, and thrill them.

The results so far are pretty awful if you ask me - poor media coverage, problematic hardware/software, unhappy customers (with the exception of a few die-hard fans), absolutely horrid customer support, vacuous promises and no delivery. This is death-knell. You HAVE to earn your customer ‘s trust before painting pictures of future glory. NI isn't a start-up anymore as it's been a while in the making. Rohan needs to get off his 'I'm a visionary' nonsense and deliver a great product. Speeches on computing history and grand future means nothing and a lot of us can do that sitting on our chairs. What makes a difference is delivery - and we know where NI is on that front so far. As much as I want to make this tablet sound incredible, my mind sums it as ‘a reference design with more hardware features’, and that’s pretty much it. Because software on it is badly done and if you’ve looked around, tablets must offer an ‘experience’ not a hardware with more ‘features’, and there’s a big difference.

Those fans that criticize the complainers saying “you signed into the pre-order as a beta user” are missing something critical. The company should have fully geared itself around supporting the small set of pre-orders to ensure that this closed group was superbly supported while they sorted their issues –whether supply chain or software, and NI failed to do that. The issue is not pre-order, but an abysmally managed pre-order. It is inexcusable to not just botch the pre-orders but then fail to support your greatest proponents (the one who put down their hard earned cash), and then come back talking a vague future which I’ll admit, I did not even understand.

Successful startups I've observed in the past focus on swiftly reaching out to their customers and making sure word-of-mouth is great, and NI has failed at that. Adam is turning out to be a tablet that's good for a few tech-nerds and well short of general market, and in a competitive, fast moving market they will have to sell a LOT to make decent margin $. If there is no rush of second level general customers, they don't have a market to sell. My sense is their customer base has hardly grown - if any at all.

The few die-hard fans, in my view, are doing a greater disservice to the company than they are helping. When you see obvious problems, take the company to task. Meaningless cheer leading ("my gps is broke, I have to root my device, my s/w crashes, the screen isn't great...but I LOVE my adam!") isn't helpful. Fan sites like NotionInkSpot should direct some of the grievances and sharp rebuke towards NI, and perhaps then NI will take notice.

I see little evidence of NI having improved substantially with user feedback, and that’s a pity. They’re slowly, but firmly and unwittingly positioning themselves in the ‘hacker hardware’ market which is the market you definitely do not want to be in, in the long run.

5 comments:

  1. Completely agree. All talk and no action. I can't even comment in the official forum (a joke, no one from support answers there anyway) because I need a Facebook account, ugh.

    The notion ink spot you mentioned is a complete joke - they have been begging people to join and they have maybe 20 members in there. In the end, the glorious iPad 2 killer will have maybe 100 customers vs. 45 million for iPad 2. What a shame and I had such expectations.

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  2. Spot on. Notion ink has lost creditbility. I'm wondering what is the purpose of conclave aka live website. There are users(5%) which are still blindly following Rohan's false dream. These people are just ignoring the problems faced by others.
    Notion Ink failure is not because Adam has problems but the due to lack of will to support us, admit the fault and take appropriate action.

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  3. I for one was all over the adam at first but it took them so long to get it out there great specs is now common and comes with just about every tablet at the same price with better support and screens not to mention true multi touch (asus transformer). :)

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  4. Hi
    Is someone here already get or try one ?
    I got one and an ipad as well. Both are great but really not the same usage.
    Don't read too much on the ipad and don't play with the Adam (no real HD Android games) and you will be happy with both.
    Adam tablet is a huge open hard device, and it's the only one.
    Enjoy yours

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  5. Wait...He said he will take us to the future...or being future faster to us...

    With all talk and no action...future will indeed come faster....Like:

    Rohan Shravan: Adam...blah blah...I did everything...blah blah....Eve...Blah blah.....Eden...Blah blah....

    Wait.....2011...2020...2050....2300....2500.....3000....Adam 200, Eden 200, Eve 300....blah blah...

    They really are here for centuries...atleast he is!!

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