[Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards

[NeilBrown]

On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 23:14:30 +0100 Rainer Dorsch <ml at bokomoko.de> wrote:

> Hi Nikolaus,
> 
> Am Tuesday 26 March 2013 schrieb Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller:
> > Well, that still is 400 EUR for a device without WLAN and GPS (which most
> > Androids @ 100 EUR have). The key problem is that "free and open and well
> > documented" isn't worth the difference for the majority of the world
> > population. Except for our small group.
> > 
> > Generally the component cost goes down if we can order let's say 10k...
> > 
> > A rough estimate is that if 1-10 units is 100%, 100 is 80% 1k is 60% 10k is
> > 40% and 1 Mio is 20%. So we could expect 250 EUR for a full GTA04A5 board
> > (i.e. ca. 350 EUR for a complete device) if we can produce a batch of 10k
> > needing a credit line of 2.5 Mio EUR...
> > 
> > But I doubt that we can get 10k non-Openmoko freaks interested if we "just"
> > add "free and open and well documented" to a feature-phone. We should have
> > something unique and compelling that only real open source can provide
> > (and not even "open" Android or Ubuntu Touch).
> 
> Derived from your numbers (and I have no doubt in them), mass production is 
> really the key. Not sure if it was discussed before: Can a dual boot GTA04 be 
> built Android/Replicant + QtMoko ? 
> 
> That means everybody has access to all the Android apps and people buying 
> GTA04 at least do not need to worry to buy a second phone with Android to run 
> a certain app. People just running Android on GTA04 help GTA04 to make use of 
> economy of scale....plus they have a reasonable chance to get a device which 
> sees updates for a long time.
> 
> Rainer
> 

Dual boot would be trivial, and getting Android or Replicant running should
certainly be possible.  But nobody is actually doing it.

We don't really have a critical mass of GTA04 owners, so we don't have a
strong volunteer development community, so lots of things that could get done
simply don't get done.  The few active developers we have are doing some
great work, but they are only human, and have to eat as well.

NeilBrown
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