It does appear that NI is paying attention to outstanding customer issues (see the last 2 posts... very unusual that they've come in succession, and you can also see Rohan responding to some customer posts on the blog rather quickly). Why the sudden change or behavior, your guess is as good as mine.
This is a good sign.
Too early to tell much, and in my opinion too late to make a real positive impact, but at least you see movement. And for that reason I'm going to wait before I bitch about his new promises on the last senseless post.
Just one note - Rohan, get SOMEONE ELSE to manage PR & support responses on a consistent basis. Or is there no one else?
But the dismal comments and follow up does give indication what the company has lost while proving that they are still 'ALIVE' ....
ReplyDeletenow the hardest hurdle which lies in front of them is capturing the excitement and eyeballs of the consumer "YET ALL OVER AGAIN' or they have to shell out millions of investors moeny to hire a PR and change the name (ADAM2) like what fusion garage did for the GRID10... !!!
If they can deliver a tablet that is not buggier than the mainstream, and yet delivers something that is quite, and positively distinct, apart from being actually usable, I think they will be able to sell a few thousand more. I don't know if I will be a repeat customer though.
ReplyDeleteI just hope that we get our share of Ice Cream Sandwich delivered before the hardware is too obsolete to use, so that the Adam can be used as something more than an embarrassing curiosity and a halfway device.
The question is if they can deliver something "positively distinct, apart from being actually usable" in a profitable way. There's only so long you can keep spending cash and not earn anything back. Too late if you ask me.
ReplyDeleteSimply put:
buyers = new enthusiasts + existing customer "upgraders"
and what do you have?
very few, almost non-existent new enthusiasts & also a non-existent (almost) current customers who will upgrade. To add to the other comment below - they'd have to practically remarket themselves all over again, hoping to somehow erase memories of Adam 1, and have enough people to buy a new device - and I mean enough people to actually turn a profit to sustain. And that means, in a Tablet market, a few thousand sales just won't cut it.
See my response to Nishit's comment. You're right.
ReplyDeleteOne way out is to re-brand entirely (i.e don't call it Adam 2, don't call the company Notion Ink. Just give a completely new name and try something), but you'd have ask who would want to keep putting money in something that throws away everything built in the last 2-3 years. I've never seen a selling strategy as such from them, and don't see one now either. We'll see.
While it's nice to see the company taking initiative (finally) to get stuff sorted out, I don't understand how anyone can trust them to follow through on their promises or release a follow-up device.
ReplyDeleteWhat bothers me is that they are just putting a ticketing and FAQ system in place NOW...9 months after the device first shipped to customers. That's the sort of thing that really needed to be in place BEFORE selling a product to a customer at all. And don't give me that "but they are a startup" bullshit, as I've said before, that's not an excuse. Running a business is hard. Releasing a product is hard. Releasing a product with little money and in a VERY competitive marketplace when you are in a country with limited VC resources and have little experience is even harder. If it was easy, everyone would do it.
Even with the additional capital, rebranding campaign and pseudo-positive reviews, Fusion Garage is going to have a really hard time selling their product to anyone, let alone people that still remember JooJoo. From what we can tell, Notion Ink doesn't have anything even close in the way of investment capital and it certainly doesn't have the logistical backend in place to offer sales via Amazon, NewEgg, etc. Let's not even start on their abysmal quality control. Adam 1 is indicative of a shoddily designed, poorly built product. It is the ultimate example of why no one should EVER base a buying decision based on the spec sheet.
The sad thing is, a lof of people wanted Adam to succeed. I started calling this thing JooJoo2 last August or September and was absolutely skewered online for expressing my opinion. I even got hate email because of a comment I left under my real name on Android Police. I'm honestly not happy that I was totally right -- because I feel for people who were duped out of their money on such a shitty gadget, but the writing was on the wall.
I don't even know if rebranding would be enough to save them. Their best shot would be to do what they supposedly do, which is design. Then license that design to a different brand/ODM that could sell it under a new name that wasn't associated with Adam. Of course, for that to happen, as Nishit says, they would need something unique and special. Eden isn't it. Genesis isn't it. A terrible swivel camera isn't it.
One more thing -- relying on Google to release the source for Ice Cream Sandwich is really dangerous. Yes, Google says they will release it, but that release (if it happens) will likely take place months after OHSA members get it. As it stands, we're probably looking at November, realistically, before we see a Nexus Prime or something else shipping with ICS. So where does that put Notion Ink? Waiting for the ROM community to reverse engineer and hack together bits to try to make something usable. And not to take any work away from those volunteers, but that's not a stable, commercial OS and it isn't something that should be sold in advance.
Notion Ink learned the hard way why it is so important not to rely on unreleased information when designing a product. Even Fusion Garage, I think, took the smarter approach with their Grid10 tablet. They just said, fuck waiting for Google or paying to be part of OHSA, we'll just hack the hell out of the kernel and build our own OS on top and then create a BlackBerry Playbook style Android app player. How well that will work is anyone's guess. My personal feeling is it won't work that well. Still, at least they didn't sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for Google to release the source code.
The problem with Fusion Garage was their saying "fuck Ubuntu, we'll target an audience that wants a full-fledged computer to play mobile phone games".
ReplyDeleteSorry for the expletive, jksaur.