They’re two different queues.
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This post is about Librem 5 USA and its availability. It has different supply chains and different order numbers from Librem 5. We are currently shipping through both queues right now actually, but it takes longer to get through the Librem 5 queue because there are many more orders and it has sometimes been harder to get components in the quantities we need for it (a mass-produced product like that generally has a minimum you have to hit to start up the production line, much higher than we have for the Librem 5 USA). Missing a single component is enough to pause production.
The situation is improving, however, and we hope to get through all the Librem 5 backorders by the end of the year as long as components arrive when they are supposed to and manufacturing runs aren’t delayed. Some components (such as CPUs) had long lead times. We’ll be sure to post news about Librem 5 when there is something newsworthy. At the moment it’s just “we are still shipping through the last manufacturing run” which isn’t anything new.
Let’s please try to keep this thread on the topic of Librem 5 USA. As we mentioned in a past post about our change from “Just in Time” for the Librem 14, the Librem 14 was first to take advantage of our massive investment in supply and pivot over to maintaining much larger inventories, and the Librem 5 USA is the latest to be close to moving over to this new model. We just need to get through the backorders first.
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FWIW the referenced Librem 14 announcement claimed the Librem 14 would be shipping from that stock starting the first week of January.
Based on other similar self set and unmet timelines I do think it’s reasonable to be very skeptical of the is current Librem 5USA announcement and not expect the Librem 5 USA to actually start shipping from that style of stock in the near future but rather be mentally prepared for 6 months before that is met.
I make that 6 month assessment based on the consistent missed expectations and the referenced librem 14 miss, that estimate was in December for the first week of January, this is a similar few weeks away based on the announcement so using past experiences to influence the current estimate, 6 months seems like a reasonable estimate to actually hit the desired goal.
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And we started shipping from that stock the second or third week of January instead (if not sooner than that), due to a shipping delay over the holidays, and an office shutdown we do the last two weeks of the year that meant some catch-up when we opened back up. I know we even published a picture of one of the pallets of laptops that arrived in mid-Jan.
We are trying to make conservative estimates based on the information we have, and in a challenging and constantly-changing environment.
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My understanding now is that, after some correspondence from Purism, that stock of V14 is now plentiful and shipping. Things like anti-interdiction would slow things up, but I now hear there is stock.
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For reference on where I was coming from.
Seeing things like this: Why can't the company provide a refund for a product never received
This:
And this:
Which make it look like refunds are being delayed until their point in the queue which hasn’t reached and December orders shipping in very late January or early February.
(Those each have their own threads so I’m not looking to have those conversations here, just showing examples of the information I was working with when making my previous post)
If we accept these as exceptions then Maybe the Librem 5 USA will be shipping from stock that arrives in June or July after all.
Though with the Librem 14 example of shipping backorders “from stock” by shipping from the pallet that arrived in the third week of January… that implies that Librem 5 orders may not ship out quickly from that stock, only that once the backorders ship from that stock they will continue to catch up while shipping from stock.
I agree that anti-interdiction related delays should not be used in the context of shipping JIT vs from stock as that would be a dishonest argument to make. The anti-interdiction service should be expected to cause delays all it’s own.
I wasn’t meaning to imply that now they aren’t but rather they missed the timeline of the first week of January that they set for themselves. I did think they missed it by more but it may just be that my limited information was the exceptions rather than missing by some small number of weeks.
Well now that we all understand each other, hopefully we can get back to the topic of Librem 5 USA.
So then back to the Librem 5 USA. When Purism created a second supply chain and a second queue for a product that is different only in supply chain and a different queue at Purism, they created an ethical quandary for themselves.
So let’s compare the situation to someone who finds themselves in a situation where they are suddenly unable to pay all of their monthly bills. How would most people handle such a situation? Obviously, you pay the rent, the power bill, and buy food as a first priority. If after that you can’t pay your credit card payments, well… there is no immediate penalty for not paying unsecured debt. You put those bills off however long it takes until you have more money in the budget to start paying those older unsecured debts again also. In the meantime, those bills where you got past benefits but you no longer need to pay on them now to survive, don’t get paid or get paid much less for now.
How might this relate to Purism? The price of a Librem 5 USA is about double that of a non-USA version. New Librem 5 USA orders bring in both more revenue now and also a higher revenue stream now. At this point, profits aren’t even relevant for the moment. You barrow from one revenue source to pay whatever has to be paid next, to avert disaster. The worst case scenario would be if all revenue completely stopped because then, you couldn’t even barrow from Peter to pay Paul.
Since Purism has not been transparent about anything related to amount of any orders in their current queue (USA or non-USA), past number of orders filled, or anything financial, ever, we have reason to be very concerned right now.
The chip shortage is global. It does not affect only China, where the Librem 5 non-USA is made. The United States is not a haven where there is no chip shortage now. Any larger supply of chips available in the United States now is artificial, and is only an artifact of more ability for American markets to pay any price to get what they demand. The global geography of the chip market is otherwise irrelevant. Sourcing the chips in the USA is not easy either, except that Americans might be willing to pay significantly higher prices to beat-out the competition. Ultimately, the chips from any given manufacturer are all made in the same fabs now as they were in 2018, regardless of whether or not there is a chip shortage or which market those chips are sold in to. The global silicon chip supply chains are all the same global silicon chip supply chains everywhere, until Purism receives a shipment of chips and then parses them internally, in to separate Purism-internal product queues, regardless of where on the planet the chips were shipped from. Except now, the global supply of available chips with respect to demand, is much lower than it was in 2018. So as a company, when you buy from this global chip market all it will sell to you, where do you allocate your limited supply of chips to go? That ethical quandary and the survival as a company says, “cater to new revenues first”. There is a product made to fill this niche that was conceived of for this purpose prior to the Pandemic, when Purism likely faced financial challenges, before there was any chip shortages. That product is called the Librem 5 USA.
How is that for keeping this thread on topic for the Librem 5 USA Kyle? The ball is in your court now. Facts and figures (not vagueness and hype) please.
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Hard to demand that when your entire complaint is conjecture.
Hard to not demand that when my 2019 Librem 5 order has been put in the backseat, behind the newly hyped Librem 5 USA product and priority delivery to those customers.
Hard to not demand that when Purism doesn’t stick to promised shipping dates, nor do they disclose anything about product shipments and numbers of orders as they operate this way.
When Purism disappoints and doesn’t offer any substantive information about their questional business practices, all that is left is conjecture. So let’s wait to see if Kyle tells me I’ve got it all wrong. If not, or if no response by him, it must be true.
Let’s remember that Purism is a business, not a cult. Put on your thinking cap before attempting to act as an apologist for them. My questions are valid. At this point, even the conjecture is absolutely reasonable. And by the way, my knowledge of the chip market is not conjecture. Neither is the apologist claim here that the Librem 5 USA is a different product because it has different supply chains. The supply chain differences for the electronic components start when Purism parses the chips after buying them from THE (one and only) current dog-eat-dog global supply chain.
The ethical way is to raise the price for new customers and ship the Librem 5 in sequential chronological order where no one cuts in line.
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Purism doesn’t promise shipping dates. This announcement is an estimate for when they will be shipping from stock. So an estimate, not a promised shipping date.
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They never meet their estimated dates… three years later. Why should anyone purchase a Librem 5 USA now, because Kyle claims that Purism is almost caught up? We’ve heard that before, many times. No one is in a position to audit Purism’s claims of being close to completing any future act that they imply is coming soon. Purism is attempting to generate new Librem 5 USA revenues as a result of Kyle’s article here. But Purism is not really being accountable to anyone by making vague implications that no one can hold them to. They only promote the hype and an apparent random few people actually get product fulfillment. No one in their right mind would purchase a non-USA Librem 5 now. You’ll be amongst the unwashed masses who remain forever behind those in line who purchased the USA version so that Purism can prime the pump with only a suggestion (not a commitment) that they might be close to delivering to a few more of those people, not to even mention fulfilling your new ordee.
I just don’t agree with the Ponzi scheme here, any time Purism tries to prime the pump with articles that make vague claims that are never substantiated by any more than a few random people who show up on this forum, claiming to have received their phone. Whether it is true or not, Purism is acting like a company that can only make good on a few past commitments, if some new people will send them more money now to make it happen.
So I ask Kyle for some real numbers. If he doesn’t provide them, be very afraid because I am correct. How many phones are “close” Kyle, when it comes to Librem 5 USA shipping parity? The word “close” is subjective and absolutely non-commited. Can you even tell us what “close” means? (probably going to be no answer to that question). “Some time in June” is not anything that we can hold you to.
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Oh, wow, is it the weekend again already…?
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I understand that some customers are highly upset. I also don’t understand the Purism interpretation of “in stock”. For me you either can ship the product on the next business day or it is not really in stock.
But still I am really greatful for the work that Purism does and that they have the USA version of Librem 5 and I am very happy that they plan to start holding inventory in stock and get rid of these ridiculous delivery delays.
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My eyes glaze over a lot with this stuff, but can I ask how many common components exist between the USA and non-USA models? I mean EXACT, as in place of manufacture?
I would only have a problem if my non-USA L5 was sacrificing components stopping it getting to me so the more expensive USA could get out the door. Otherwise the existence of the USA model has no bearing on the time that my L5 gets to me.
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I agree with this statement, but we don’t know if that’s the case. Hence, conjecture.
Like the use of the term “apologist.”
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Gotcha. For some reason I thought this was known.
Well, let me qualify by saying I don’t recall having ever received that information. I’m hardly an authority though.
In many cases the supply chains for components for L5 and L5USA are different, by design. We have tried as much as possible for L5USA to source from US companies and ideally with components that were themselves made in the USA. Of course this isn’t always possible for each component, but we make an effort. It has meant we had to take time to build up a separate supply chain for these components for L5USA.
Another factor I think many folks haven’t considered when it comes to the supply chain crisis and Just In Time production is that in the past, if a particular supplier has a problem or there are other delays, you could often just go elsewhere for a particular component and still hit your timelines. These days it’s much more difficult to recover from a hiccup in the supply chain. Sometimes none of the alternative sources have supply either, because everyone bought up what they could (and in some cases are reselling it for a 2x-10x markup on the spot market).
Remember that run on toilet paper/sanitizing wipes/hand cleaner? Before that happened, if your main store ran out of those things you could just go to another store and get it. When those items had a supply chain crisis, all your local stores were out, as well as online sources as everyone bought up what they could. It took many months (I think a year for sanitizing wipes), but now those things are back in stock in reasonable supplies so you can just drop into a local store and buy them. Imagine that situation but for random electronics components, and extended out over 2 years, and you have an idea of what it’s been like. It’s starting to get better though.
As I mentioned in a different reply another factor at play here is order volume. The mass-produced L5 requires higher quantities of components to start up a manufacturing run. The CPU shortage meant that CPUs we needed in those quantities had long lead times. They are now starting to trickle in, in larger quantities which is good, and if things go according to schedule we should be able to catch up to all L5 orders by the end of the year.
The L5USA is a small batch product. It has a much smaller queue, and we can start up manufacturing runs for that with lower quantities of components. In many cases we placed orders for components for both products through their separate supply chains at similar times, and they are arriving when they arrive. We have also sometimes been able to source parts in smaller quantities on the spot market as they come up (usually at a much higher price) which has helped us make more L5USA (and L5 too as we have found some CPUs on the spot market for L5 through its supply chain as well). These L5USA quantities would be a drop in the bucket if they were to be diverted to L5 instead of L5USA where they were intended (not to mention the logistics of shipping them to those facilities) and often still wouldn’t be enough to start up a production run. Mass production is the solution to fulfilling all the L5 orders.
We don’t provide numbers or discuss our finances as a general policy, which you know. So you can make any conjecture you’d like and say it’s true if we don’t provide numbers, but we won’t provide numbers regardless.
It’s true “close” is subjective. If an estimate is vague it’s because we don’t have enough information to make it more specific. I feel confident enough to lower the lead time for new orders to 60 days, and feel that’s conservative, but because there are still unknowns I can’t be much more specific than that. It really bothers us when we make an estimate that turns out to be inaccurate later on. We are trying very hard not to do that. This is also why we haven’t given most L5 customers an updated shipping estimate yet. After all of the problems with estimates in the past we really do want new estimates we give to be accurate. As we feel we can give accurate estimates to folks we will update them though.
We wanted to provide an update to L5USA customers in this case as there is progress and everyone has told us they want us to provide more updates, not fewer ones, even if we don’t have all the information. It is unreasonable to expect us to have an exact date where we will hit shipping parity because we can’t predict the future. It’s always a factor of new orders coming in the future (unknown, but can make rough estimates based on past trends), past orders we need to ship (known), the speed we can ship through them (relatively known at this point), and in the case enough new orders have come in that we need to make even more phones to hit shipping parity, the shipping times for components we need for those manufacturing runs and the time to make those phones (known relatively well at this point as we have refined the L5USA production process, but could change w/ shipping delays or other unforeseen factors).
At this point we have a pretty good handle on this, which is why we shortened the lead time to 60 days. We think we’ll have sufficient quantities of L5USA at that point not just to handle existing orders and get us to shipping parity, but also handle a reasonably-sized influx of new orders with plenty of head room so that we can maintain stock from that point on and ship orders within 10 business days.
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Here is what I don’t understand, and maybe you could elucidate it for me @Kyle_Rankin. For close to a year (if not longer), the projected shipping time on the website for the Librem 5 USA has been consistently listed as 60 days. Yet with few exceptions, that hasn’t been the case. And if I’m understanding this post correctly, the hope is that all L5 USA will be shipped in the next six weeks or so, and THEN, there will be enough components for held stock to fulfill new orders in about 10 business days.
My confusion isn’t about why there have been delays in fulfillment. Much of that is understandable, given the current climate. What isn’t understandable is why there have been zero updates on the public website about the status or even existence of delays, nor changes to that 60 day availability listing. Meaning that if someone ordered a device in August of 2021 and expected to have it in October, they will actually be happy to have it in June. Even someone who ordered in January is still facing a 3x longer delay (best case scenario), than what has been listed on the sales page.
It would be helpful if you could explain why projected ship dates were never changed on the product ordering dates and what you will be doing moving forward to show that estimated fulfillment dates are actually realistic.
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