An agent from the CIA and another from the NSA show up and sit down to have dinner with Todd. It is a confusing dinner conversation because the NSA agent is trying milk Todd for information about how to how to bug the Librem 5 or sabotage it so it will never be sold, while the CIA agent is trying to figure out how to order hundreds of the phones so his agency can use them.
Todd starts talking about user digital rights and the right to privacy, and both of the agents roll their eyes at this rube. Then, Todd starts talking about the importance of releasing the source code and schematics, and NSA agent thinks to himself: “This guy is too dangerous to let his ideas spread. He could ruin all our operations. He needs to be eliminated.” He gestures to the CIA agent that he needs to take care of the dirty work, since the NSA doesn’t want to get involved in anything messy.
The CIA agent, however, ignores the NSA agent, because he’s thinking: “This guy could be a great asset. He’ll not only make great phones for us, but he’ll also send them to all the people who we want to spy on. We can use him.”
Seeing that his colleague isn’t interested in knocking off Todd, the NSA agent starts planning: “Well, maybe assassination is too much trouble. If we can just introduce a few bugs in the code, then it will always be delayed and never get released. Then, if we can spread a little FUD on Reddit, we can convince everyone that the company is going bankrupt.”
Todd finishes his sales pitch, with the question: “so how does our new Librem 5 USA sound to you? Are you interested?”
[Hey, if we are going to speculate, we might as well have some fun doing it!]
I would like Purism to be focused on making the L5 a functional smartphone instead of throwing its limited resources in all directions. This behavior is not a path to success. Pine64 seems to be doing what they said they could do. Too bad the Pinephone’s specs are so limited.
Very sorry to hear about your brother – family crises are tough!
I agree with your happiness regarding L5USAE customers. Hell, I’m happy about L5PRCE customers! I’m not rich by a long shot, but rich folks buy cool stuff and bring the price down for the rest of us.
In the case of the L5, rich folks aren’t gonna be much help, so it’s up to us normal folk. With respect to a privacy-respecting, secure GNU/Linux phone we get to play the part of the millionaire – buying something to bring the price down for the masses. Either edition, I think we – Purism and their customers – are doing everyone a solid.
I agree, I’ve been watching and tracking Pine64’s progress and it looks pretty good minus the specs as you’ve stated. For me though I’ve decided it’s probably the better route as I’m looking for a more tightly integrated KDE setup and purism is focused on gnome. My thoughts on gnome in general is . I understand that’s probably what their laptops use but that matters little to me because I’m definitely not going to purchase one of their laptops. Yes I understand Pine64 isn’t developing software, yet as it stands right now there’s more functional available software available for it than the librem. I’ve ordered the pinebook pro and the pinephone braveheart edition, just waiting on the tab to be developed which will happen probably by q2 2020 so I’ll have all three under the price of a single librem by q3 2020
Thanks, heś out of the hospital now Still very awkward though because I honestly liked my SIL too
I get why if locally made were really important to some lower paid workers they could make 2 grand happen (I drained my vacation pay to buy the Librem 5 because the Free software social movement is super important to me), but made in the USA would have to be very super important to a low wage earner at that price. And hey, thereś nothing wrong with offering high end products to begin with (because on top of everything else, the Librem 5 USA is that too :))
Perhaps it should be taken as a sign of growth? I don’t understand where all this naysaying about purism’s inability to succeed comes from when there’s evidence to the contrary. If it’s the principle of the matter you’re worried about, then why? If they offered a 1337 package where you could pay $133,700 to take a dump in Todd’s bathroom, they have that right. Nobody has to buy it. We also don’t know how getting a USA version works, they may be completely custom made and no resources are getting “wasted” unless an order actually comes in. Maybe that model won’t be ready for another year. Speculation goes both ways, I don’t get why speculating towards the negative is the choice here.
I am not sure what “trust of supply chain cost” is. I didn’t see that anywhere in my MBA studies. Integrity of the product is just a part of its features and value that Purism offered in their initial campaign. All that matters when it comes to delivery on a shipping commitment is what it costs to make and ship the product. Even product development costs aren’t included because those costs should have been paid much earlier in the process. Profit is also not relevant at that point because whether or not it is profitable, Purism has a commitment to keep. The actual cost of raw materials and assembly are relatively low because those materials are all commodities. The real value is in the market value of the finished product. But the cost to Purism to get their own product built and shipped to keep their commitment is always a small percentage of the overall value. That is why the company always makes its profits on both margin and volume (both) in the end. Learning to manufacture their product in high volume inexpensively requires yet more development.
No, your MBA course probably called it price premium through product differentiation strategy (M. Porter, 1980) of which Reputation is one dimension, of which trust is a big factor.
But they definitely included what the OP expressed.
But OTOH Porter would have called this a niche strategy rather than a product differentiation strategy.
Sorry, but firms have to recoup their investments through sales whenever they occured in the process. Tht can be the building employees work in, product development costs or anything else. How else would they pay for it? These are part of the fixed costs that have to be spread among the number of sold units.
The Wi-Fi/BT M.2 card is made at Redpine Signal’s design center in Hyderabad, India. According to this article from 2011, Redpine uses TSMC to fab its chips and ASE for assembly, so it is likely that the RS9116 chip is fabbed in Taiwan.
The NAND Flash memory is from Toshiba, fabbed in Yokkaichi, Japan.
The RAM is from Micron, which fabs RAM in Virginia, Utah, Japan and Taiwan.
I couldn’t find any info on where Gemalto fabs its chips, but considering that it is based on Qualcomm’s tech, it is probably fabbed by TSMC in Taiwan or Samsung in South Korea.
Hi Spaetz, I totally get your translation of terms in to MBA-speak. That makes sense. But although I agree also with the second part of your post, I differ when it comes to the intent in this case. Purism gets a pass routinely in many areas of business where we might otherwise say “hell no”. The promise is basically ‘trust us now and believe us, you will get your phone’s.’ Then they make promises that they don’t keep and find ways of twisting the truth so that they could be said to be keeping agreements. They are doing a tough job. We all get that, and Purism gets yet another pass. At the same time, they stretch everything out as far as they can through lack of transparency and through the tactical disclosure of just enough information to keep us believing. For now against my better judgement, I am going with that. But as Purism continues to make these questionable choices I say something like “hell no, Purism’s profit is not necessarily my concern”. I want them to make a profit. But even at a loss if necessary, I want my phone either way. So I look at Purism’s break even point as the success criteria without any consideration of their profits. After I have my phone and Purism is shipping millions of phones with a healthy profit on each phone, those profits will all belong to Purism, not to me. Before they get to that point, they need to ship my phone to me at either a profit or at a loss if necessary.
Not true. If it were a situation would develop where some entities were willing to have negative gain because the demand for a product at a price was there. In an ideal situation (no monopoly or other perversions), their’s an equilibrium found in a market where the fixed and marginal cost “curve” of the producer meets the demand “curve” of the buyers on a price-quantity chart.
Also, maybe along with the point you were trying to make, and akin to “If a tree falls in the forest but nobody is there to hear it, does it make a noise?”…
Plenty of producers go out of business because their ask for the cost of production is more than anybody is willing to pay, so the market doesn’t happen for that product, therefore the price was never determined, just the ask, and maybe a bid, but without the transaction, it’s not priced. Still, it’s not demand alone that determines price. Demand is necessary, but not sufficient.
I fail to see how sending schematics to another producer is a difficult task. Sure he doubles the number of suppliers from 1 to 2, but come on. Their’s no throwing of resources into the wind in this situation.
Also, I think it’s safe to assume Purism was getting a significant demand for this Pure.USA before they told us about it. I tried to push options that I wanted on Purism then found out my desires were just mine and that’s why they aren’t gonna happen.
Purism won’t make a cent in profit until it recovers its development costs. If my back-of-the-envelope calculation is right (which is questionable), Purism won’t start making a profit until it sells over 12k of phones. Considering that Purism now has 20+ employees working on the Librem 5, it will need even more sales going forward to cover its costs.
Whether Purism makes a profit or not is your concern. The company relies heavily on its ongoing sales to pay for its operations, so it can’t run for years without profits like many Silicon Valley startups. We need Purism to stay in business, so it can keep improving the software interface and keep issuing software updates in the future. It is the ongoing software development which will make the Librem 5 valuable and useful. If you get your Librem 5 tomorrow, but Purism disappears, then you are stuck. Maybe the community will take over development, but critical things like figuring out the MIPI CSI interface on the i.MX 8M might never happen and all the power management problems might never get solved. Purism’s ongoing work is critical, because many of the components in the Librem 5 don’t yet have good mainline Linux support.
I get your logic, and I agree that their marketing … ahem… has room for improvement. But they are between a rock and a hard place. Delays will occur, delays of a year are not uncommon (when did Samsung want to bring out their foldable thing originally? And they have unlimited resources). If they say: ‘Everything’s fine’ they have lied and if they say, ‘our phones still don’t do audio’ people will hate, laugh and demand refunds… You have to be somewhat insane to attempt what purism attempts. So that is why I am so lenient towards purism when I am not with other companies.
Sorry to disappoint you or your positive oversight/intention, but, if this is about typical/usual NXT production, i.MX 8M Quad is based on 28nm High Performance Compact for Mobile (HPC) platform (might be by using High-K/Metal Gate option). Links that you provided are related to i.MX 8 QuadMax, i.MX 8QuadXPlus and other upcoming i.MX 8 derivatives that already are or will be based on 28nm FD-SOI process technology. @amosbatto, please take a closer look as I might be wrong.
@quarnero,
Yes, you are right. This presentation shows that the i.MX 8 and i.MX 8X series are FD-SOI, but the i.MX 8M series is HPC.
That means that the i.MX 8M Quad could be made in either Giheung, South Korea or Austin, Texas, USA.
Unfortunately, this means that the i.MX 8M Quad isn’t as power efficient, but it should be a little cheaper to make, and it can more easily be shrunk to 14nm FinFET.
Purchasing the USA model would have twofold reasoning for me: patriotism, and not supporting China. I would gladly pay this if, and only if, exactly 0% of it was sourced from China (nothing against the Chinese people, everything against their government), and preferably was truly 100% US-sourced and assembled, including the cables, literature, and box that ships with it.
. I understand that’s probably what their laptops use but that matters little to me because I’m definitely not going to purchase one of their laptops. Yes I understand Pine64 isn’t developing software, yet as it stands right now there’s more functional available software available for it than the librem. I’ve ordered the pinebook pro and the pinephone braveheart edition, just waiting on the tab to be developed which will happen probably by q2 2020 so I’ll have all three under the price of a single librem by q3 2020
Still very awkward though because I honestly liked my SIL too 
