Big Companies Should Invest In Pandora-like Projects?


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QUOTE
I hope that other potential startups learn from this project rather than the big industry that spends half of the time with killing jobs, anyway. Trust the small and medium companies and ignore the industry, it's better for us all.

I totally agree. Sometimes working in a big company is a very bad ideea. However, only big companies can bring good things to us all. Like the netbook for example. A small company can bring a good thing only to a few lucky ones. And if Pandora will sell in huge numbers, then it will become a big company - that won't make it untrustable, I think.
It is tottaly possible to make it in huge numbers, without loosing any identity. A venture capital does not ask you to do something else. An investor will just analyse if your products/services have potential. If it has, it will give you the money, because they know they will get profit. It's just like in the stock market. If you have Apple shares, can you dictate the company what to do? Not quite
 
dagger said:
QUOTE
I hope that other potential startups learn from this project rather than the big industry that spends half of the time with killing jobs, anyway. Trust the small and medium companies and ignore the industry, it's better for us all.

I totally agree. Sometimes working in a big company is a very bad ideea. However, only big companies can bring good things to us all. Like the netbook for example. A small company can bring a good thing only to a few lucky ones. And if Pandora will sell in huge numbers, then it will become a big company - that won't make it untrustable, I think.
It is tottaly possible to make it in huge numbers, without loosing any identity. A venture capital does not ask you to do something else. An investor will just analyse if your products/services have potential. If it has, it will give you the money, because they know they will get profit. It's just like in the stock market. If you have Apple shares, can you dictate the company what to do? Not quite

That's not quite right. The big ones keep the small ones down. That is the reason and not the inability of the small companies. It's starting to get political so I back out here ;)
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Sorry to tell you, but Pandora is unlikely to run any version of it.

Why so? At least some open source should run tho: pigdin, meebo etc

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We've got devs who try to build the best tool possible, and users who are wanting to use that tool. What would be gained by diluting either end of the equation? Mass appeal? Pandora has the potential to become big, and I hope it does, but it'll have to happen on Craig & Co's terms. The customer/user ratio is already perilously high, causing unnecessary diversions.

Everything is perilous on this earth. But when you have a good product capable of making profit, an investor should be crazy not to invest in it, even without askin any modifications, just because otherwise it would not be an investor. Anyways, even in the worst case, from 10 potential investors, at least one will accept not to interfere and make the product 100% your style
 
Though it's not entirely Pandora-like, the WePC.com project seems like a sign the industry is taking a few hints from projects like the Pandora, asking for input on designs and features from the people who actually want to use the machine.
 
I think if a big company had come in with the funds at the start, then some aspects could have been handled better, namely:

The bank and credit card scenario - the big company would have wanted to see a business plan and ensured an adequate bank was in place (not to say the original bank was any good in curren t economic climate)

Secondly, if the partner was ensuring its investment was protected they could of leveraged their own resources to ensure that the orders were in place and signed off and in place, prior to the pre-order stage

This would of left the Devs to complete and finalize the Pandora design instead of having to deal with the uncessary crap that they have had to deal with over the past few months

BUT this would have been at a price - you never know what you would of gotten with a partner - they may have wanted more control in the way the business was run, control over design issues, even re-brand and sell crappier versions of the Pandora to other 3rd party manufacturers, or they could of just stayed quiet in the background content that they were getting a valid return on investment.
 
QUOTE
that's not quite right. The big ones keep the small ones down. That is the reason and not the inability of the small companies

If that would have been true, companies like Google, Facebook, Youtube and many others would never have grown to their current size. You can get money from an investor that will give you the freedom to use the money as you think it's best. You just have to find that investor.
 
I have the impression that people who buy netbooks nowadays just want a small notebook. They do not want to use it like a handheld. I think that is because G3 internet is still too expensive. You could take a computer-handheld anywhere with you but wouldn't be able to access the internet from everywhere. So what's the point? Because of this Pandora-like handhelds have still a limited appeal. That is why no big company has made something like the Pandora so far (only smartphones and big netbooks). As soon as G3 internet gets cheap other companies will make ultra portable notebooks, I am sure. Craig said in an interview that there will be nothing on the market like the Pandora for a long time. Yes, maybe, but just because it is still a little early for such a device. ED said in an interview that is not difficult to make the Pandora because it consists of standard parts that are already used in other devices but just not in this particular combination. So I think a big company wouldn't need openpandora to get an ultra portable notebook on the market. They will do it when the time is right. I even think that Sony's next PSP will head into the Pandora direction (small keyboard, two analog sticks etc.) because that is the most logical evolution for the PSP. But they will release something like this when people are able to get cheap G3 internet access. And that will be the point in time when the mass market wants a device like this.

I do no intend to say that the Pandora has no appeal at all at present. But it appeals more to certain groups like people who buy it for emulation, coding or early adporters who want an ultra portable notebook now and do not want to wait for the mass market. I think a big company would just want to make as much money as possible in the shortest possible time. They would just milk it and drop it.
 
My 2 cents about a "version 2" for the future (maybe just a parallel version named "Pandora+", a little more expensive):

There are just 2 things the average Joe might want from this device:
-Internal NAND storage
-One feature chosen between HDMI, GPS, Wi-Max, WiFi-N or similar stuff.
Nothing more.
EG: I think that including a Cortex A-9 should be quite pointless since people that use smartphone simply ignore completely what is "under the hood", some of them do not even know the difference between the CPU and the PCB :p

And BTW: stuff like the Pandora will be made popular as soon as they (the Big Companies) stop selling devices with a phone inside. Now they will probably stop with phones since when everyone spent 400+ $ for a smartphone without keyboard and USB, he will not buy another one within 2 or 3 years. The future are tiny devices with USB and HDMI, and the Pandora might become really interesting for the masses from now onwards.
 
dagger said:
It's just like in the stock market. If you have Apple shares, can you dictate the company what to do? Not quite
Click to expand...
Easily, given that you have enough shares.

Pandora is a relatively small undertaking. An investment the size you're envisaging would've meant relinquishing disproportionate amount of control. In current financial climate, half of potential backers would've pulled out at the first sign of any problems. And devs would be sitting on 150.000 preorders to be filled.

Your vision might be doable _after_ first batch, when the physical product and inevitable reviews are there to strengthen devs' bargaining position.
 
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@dagger

Without wishing to be rude, you seem a little naive about how business (particularly big business) works. Looking for some sugar daddy that is going to financially back all the decisions the Pandora team makes is never going to happen, because the only investment the backer has in the project is financial not ideological. If an investor has the choice between making £1 million and keeping the core community happy or making £2 million and pissing a lot of the core community off, what are they going to choose? Once those dollar signs are in your eyes it can be tricky to see anything else (something you are demonstrating ably in this thread).

You pick Google as an example of a company that has grown through 'hands off' types of investors, but that 'hands off' thing is just a myth, marketing hype. Sergey and Larry are seen as the brains behind the outfit because they started Google, but in reality how many decisions (big or small) get made by other people in the company (including influence from investors)? If you think they rubber stamp every decision that is made then you're basically saying Sergey and Brin run a dictatorship of a company rather than a democratic one. There are examples of big companies with 'small company' attitudes, but Google is not one of them. Google is a hungry beast, ready to move in to as many markets that extend their core business. They seem nicer than another major computer megacorp (Microsoft) but that doesn't mean they aren't greatly profit driven, just that their business doesn't have to employ irritating lock-in strategies to stay profitable.

I'm going to use a farming analogy to (hopefully) illustrate why it's best that the Pandora team keeps the project to themselves, as I think the difference is like that between organic and mass produced food. It is well known that intensive farming methods involving pesticides and suchlike produce food of lower quality, so why are these methods used? To drive for higher profit, pure and simple. However, the organic farmers are still able to turn a profit on their own terms, and provide a valuable service to those who care about their food quality. As long as the organic farmers continue to turn a profit their future is not in jeopardy. Similarly, if the Pandora is still a profitable device to produce then it doesn't matter if there are similar devices around.

The Pandora may sell in the numbers you are proposing, but let the growth be 'organic', otherwise you could sacrifice some of what makes the Pandora so compelling. To put it in another way, what are you willing to sacrifice to increase Pandora ownership? Functionality? Quality? Community-led spirit?
 
A big company wouldn't have doubled the amount of RAM without a price increase because they wouldn't have had to do it because there are no direct competitors. You can always do that later and thus give people an incentive to buy a unit that did not buy one earlier or early adopters buy another one. They wouldn't have refused to accept the second class LCD screens either. Why should they? Time is money the sooner they get this device out the better. No one can proof the actual number of screens with dead pixels. Just tell them it is very low. Early adopters with crappy screens will sell their unit on ebay anyway and buy another one from a later batch. This would have sold even more units. With demand outstripping supply for the first batch, they wouldn't have made the first units affordable either. They would have done some market research and set the price as high as possible.

From a business/investor standpoint everything would have been done differently Imo. These people ask themselves only how much money should I invest and how much money will return to me at the end of the year. They do not need the Pandora or any other device or idea to successful in the long run. They are just looking for short-term investment opportunities and there are always some. Money can easily travel around the world.
 
Keep Pandora out of the big companies' grasp! Please!

1: Nokia is a big company. They don't make cheaper devices than OpenPandora - their tablets are more expensive than the Pandora. 1-0 to OpenPandora.

2: Nokia is a big company. Their marketdroids decide on the feature set. They design for the unwashed masses, as they see it. They would _never_ connect every possible interface of the omap chipset to an external socket. In fact, on the existing tablets there are a lot of features that people have asked about just to be told that 'it's not soldered up, you can't use it.'. 2-0 to OpenPandora.

3: A big company will keep parts of the system closed, as much as they think they can get away with, and they combine it with their wish to get customers to buy a new device every year, if possible - "to get the new benefits". Their dream is that every gadget market shall be like the mobile phone market: Buy and buy and buy new devices. Instead, the Pandora was designed to have a long lifetime and there doesn't seem to be any plan in place to move closed-source fixes into some future hw+sw combo. 3-0 to OpenPandora.
 
Pandora was born because many people here thought that Gamepark Holdings will never make our perfect open handheld.

It doesn't make any sense being "adopted" by a big company.

Being a community is one of the most beautiful things about Pandora.
In fact I'd never had that patience with those delays in a big company, but the team really want things done perfectly and even if we don't know when we'll have the device in our hands they tell us what are they doing and how.

I think there is not a single company that would double the ram of a product already paid without asking for something in return. These guys really love their baby and I don't want a single person who can mess with this project over them.
 
MiniSinisterMinister said:
So I think a big company wouldn't need openpandora to get an ultra portable notebook on the market. They will do it when the time is right. I even think that Sony's next PSP will head into the Pandora direction (small keyboard, two analog sticks etc.) because that is the most logical evolution for the PSP.
Click to expand...
I don't think tech companies are always so smart. It's so easy to forget the failed products out there that never made it, even ones which had a lot of thought and passion put into them. For example, everybody talks about netbooks when Sony and Toshiba (amongst others) have been there and done this... too early for the technology to be affordable really. Think of the GameGear and Atari Lynx versus the Gameboy with backlit screens before batteries were available to handle it. What about the Dreamcast and Seganet compared to 360 and Xbox Live? What about the online connectivity tried out even earlier by Nintendo and Atari? What about the 64DD? The Apple Newton vs the Iphone?

The ratio of failed products the market never adopted to successful ones is huge!

It's funny you mention the PSP. I casually showed mine to a tech-friendly old man today, he'd never seen one before but remarked how useful it would be with a touchscreen, keyboard and the ability to run every-day applications... I showed him the Pandora!
 
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ashdjones said:
It's funny you mention the PSP. I casually showed mine to a tech-friendly old man today, he'd never seen one before but remarked how useful it would be with a touchscreen, keyboard and the ability to run every-day applications... I showed him the Pandora!
Click to expand...
Amusingly that's pretty much how I wound up here. Have a PSP with custom firmware and often wished it had a keyboard and a touchscreen. Often looked at the GP machines and thought "I'd buy it if it had a keyboard and touchscreen", then I found the Pandora and got obsessed. :p
 
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Very similar here. I was purchased a Nintendo DS because I wanted a digital sketchpad (being a Wacom user on the laptop). After getting my kicks from the Colors! painting application (which I use probably once every few days still) I thought that the DS would be awesome with a more CPU/memory and a keyboard instead of the lower screen. Noticed the Pandora and was hooked.
 
Similar here too; the DS would be great for homebrew were it officially supported. But compiling an app, sticking the file on the memory card, putting the card into the DS became such a tedious step, particularly when there was very little help available, so you'd have to do loads of compiles...
Then they announced the DSi just before the Pandora preorders started, that was the biggest motivator for me!

Tobs
 
Zoppe said:
if we let openpandora inc. (or wathever the company is called) grow and build the device themselves we can be almost sure that the pandora will be open, but if we let other company interfere they would likely want design changes, delays, different os, drm encypted stuff, and etc. i think that was/is not the goal of the pandora.

i'm not very knowledgeable and i'm just throwing my 2 cents. feel free to correct me and give CONSTRUCTIVE criticism.

(Holy $#!T when i was typing this post 5+ posts showed up)
Click to expand...
I'm with you. The world has suffered enough of zombies and drm...

latiosu said:
Pandora was born because many people here thought that Gamepark Holdings will never make our perfect open handheld.

It doesn't make any sense being "adopted" by a big company.

Being a community is one of the most beautiful things about Pandora.
In fact I'd never had that patience with those delays in a big company, but the team really want things done perfectly and even if we don't know when we'll have the device in our hands they tell us what are they doing and how.

I think there is not a single company that would double the ram of a product already paid without asking for something in return. These guys really love their baby and I don't want a single person who can mess with this project over them.
Click to expand...
That is very well said! I think Pandora should be a leading example how things can be done the other way.
 
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I don't think we would ever let an 'outsider' tell us what to do, it's pretty important to us to keep the Pandora project owned and funded by the people involved in it, that is the core team and all you guys who are buying it.

Sure that attitude has caused delays and such but in the long run I think it will be better for it. My worst nightmare would be some investor demanding we make crazy changes based on his blackberry, PSP or the worst one of all: reducing quality to save money!

I can hear it now, 'do we really need 2 nubs?'...
 
craigix said:
I don't think we would ever let an 'outsider' tell us what to do, it's pretty important to us to keep the Pandora project owned and funded by the people involved in it, that is the core team and all you guys who are buying it.

Sure that attitude has caused delays and such but in the long run I think it will be better for it. My worst nightmare would be some investor demanding we make crazy changes based on his blackberry, PSP or the worst one of all: reducing quality to save money!

I can hear it now, 'do we really need 2 nubs?'...
Click to expand...
Craigix has spoken. :ph34r:
 
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