There is the old dilemma, which only Purism governance might answer (and their opinion might also change over time): which is the market they are really proposing to (in facts, not in marketing words), and how big is it? SPC status and financing rounds aside, you can keep stuff and staff running only on pocket money, customersā purchases or government money. Each of these with own pro/cons; customersā purchases probably being the most long-time sustainable option 
Some millions of people around the worldā¦
I know that. Why do you think I bought the bloody thing? But go to /r/purism on reddit and look what people think about the current price. Increasing it further is going to put off many potential customers. And purism needs as many customers as possible. Without money this project is not going anywhere.
r/purism is exceptionally hateful to Purism. I would not rely on it to reflect the public opinion. There are quite a few trolls trying to harm Purism as much as possible.
By the way, AFAIK similar thing happened to Pine64 until they created their own āofficialā subreddit.
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Reddit is not very nice in general. I think itās the downvote feature there that brings out the worst in people.
Forums work better like this one here, you can show you appreciate something but you cannot downvote. If you disagree with someone, write a reply and make your argument.
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When Purism now re-starts shipping, can you please post somewhere in the forum a record of
- order date
- shipping check mail from Purism
- shipping mail from Purism
- door delivery date with some details (country, carrier, ...)
to continue the table in this thread:
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Just to kindly remind: L5 is not smartphone, itās a minipc with phone module. So impossible to comparison with smartphones
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If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, most people will keep calling it a duck
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You mean those many people in places where the currency exchange rate effectively puts such a device out of economic reach, or those who want to enjoy the benefits of free (as in beer) software, or the others who want to get any bit of usefulness out of cheap outdated hardware? 
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And surprise - itās a robot and no animal. 
Just a side note: Every device thatās āsmartā (like smartphone) is against user rights and not owned by users. So I would say L5 is no smartphone at all. Call it pocket computer (like I do), call it minipc, call it just (mobile) phone ā¦ all is closer then smartphone.
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Well Purism calls it a phone soā¦
Yes Kyle does, but I was referring to the actual Purism page where they describe it as a phone.
Amazing the silly things that get debated on this form. 
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I also used this term in my post.
It looks like youāre assuming Iām one of the people who want a refund. No, I want the damn phone already. (And it looks like my dogwood preorder counts for nothingā¦same timeframe as people ordering new.)
EDIT: Iām talking about the Librem5 USA I switched to hereā¦I didnāt realize this was a regular Librem5 topic.
Todd said (among other statements):
āā¦We will send a separate email later in September to each of you with a firm delivery date for your Librem 5 order. ā¦ā
Has someone already received such email? Ok, September isnāt still gone fully.
Thanks
I am also curious about this. Will L5USA orders also be getting this email?
Unfortunately, by that logic, it would still be a drop in the ocean of Windows phones owned by all the Windows users of the world. 
Nah, Purism has a problem. It needs to charge these outrageous prices because otherwise they would lose money. But in raising the prices to this point, theyāre pricing their device out of many potential customersā budget. And if we factor in that the phone is currently not even āfinishedā (software still lagging, abysmal battery time until they address that through a kernel patch), it becomes an even harder sell.
Right now, I can imagine a lot of people waiting to see what happens. Before investing in the platform, they want to know whether it will take off, and whether more affordable devices will materialise in the future. At $600, those concerns were present as well, but more people could justify the expense.
And then thereās also the Pinephone, which may be less capable, and not as fanatic about security-hardening their hardware, butā¦ For $1300, you can now get 8 regular PinePhones, or 6 PinePhones with the Convergence Pack, and still have money left over. And undoubtedly, more competition will emerge once the platform has proven thereās an actual demand. And a lot of that competition will be taking sales away from Purism, while simultaneously profiting from Purismās software efforts that created the market in the first place, without contributing back.
At a lower price point, more people may bite. But at a lower price point, Purism will go out of business. At the current price point, fewer will bite. And because of that, Purism may still be faced with the difficult choice between abandoning the project, losing the company altogether, or trying to find the balance between slowly improving the phone while also remaining financially viable. I think the latter is their current modus operandi, as they grossly underestimated the cost and effort required, or overestimated their working budget.
Not an enviable position, for sure.
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An idea for a market strategy at this point could be a kind of partnership. Yes, Purism did do all the heavy lifting up to now (sourcing, planning, engineering, developing, marketing, ā¦), but if they lose this phone business, all the work up to now will have been done for others at best, and for nothing at least.
Given that Purism has built up the know-how on this kind of open phone thingy, external partners would be glad to not need to invent the wheel again. Being first is always hardest, being second is way easier.
A well chosen partner, maybe in another region (EU might be advantageous because of potential market size and harmonized regulations and market rules) could speed up the market placement of the phone and therefore speed up further development.
There are reasons if Android has had such an enormous market acceptance, and some of them might be replicated. I personally hope this particular Linux ecosystem succeeds on smartphone devices, but obviously in a market economy any economic venture has to play by the rules of the market.
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