
Ubuntu Edge lowers prices on IndieGogo - thejosh
Hi everyone<p>The last few days have been absolutely incredible -- over $3.5 million in the first 40 hours. We’ve broken records, we’ve attracted the attention of the world, and we’re marching closer and closer to bringing the Ubuntu Edge to life. $32 million is a huge number, and we’ve never danced around this fact. To get there, we’re going to need your help to bring family, friends, fans, and followers to the campaign.<p>This crowdfunding process has already provided us with a lot of great feedback, especially about our perks -- and we’ve been listening to it all. You told us you want more opportunities to get the Ubuntu Edge at a lower contribution level, so we went back to our spreadsheets and came up with a solution. Today we’re changing our perk levels. We’ll offer a limited number of phones at each level, and as each tier runs out the next ones will be made available, so act quickly to get the best deal!<p>You’ll only see the first few levels on the campaign page today, but continuing our habit of openness and transparency we want to share the whole plan with you.<p>Hundreds of you have already contributed $830 for an Ubuntu Edge, but don’t worry. We’ll refund the difference at the end of the campaign so you won’t lose out. We’ll contact you all directly with more information.<p>We need to keep the campaign momentum going. Please help by sharing the news and, of course, keep pledging!<p>The Ubuntu Edge team<p>edit:
Link to project: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.indiegogo.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;ubuntu-edge
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fpgeek
Grumble. They also really need a $40-50 T-Shirt tier. It's amazing how easy it
can be to talk yourself into contributing that little bit extra...

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izietto
Can't agree more: tees are the real boost of crowdfounding.

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napoleoncomplex
Seems it is picking up speed again. If they could keep the price below 700$
for everyone, I think it might even go through, but then they'd probably go
bankrupt.

As a side-note, it's insane that raising $32 million with crowdfunding
actually does not seem that impossible anymore.

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chmike
For hardware, it's just a matter of value in the user's eye and the risk of
failure. Such offer have the most chance to succed and there isn't much risk
in the first place.

I see a high value in a unix Os with a very low barrier to write native apps.
IOs is a completely closed ecosystem on even has to pay to put a feet in.
Android has the cost of java vm overhead and programming overhead. Eclipse
makes me sick. Qt creator is much more efficient and productive.

With the possibility to hook a big screen to the device (hopefully a plug&play
operation) we could directly program and fiddle with the phone. Though I think
we will still need the power of a big cpu to speed up development process.

Hopefully, with the Os, we'll be able to program with our preferred language
and use C compiled with Clang when we'll want the most efficient one.

This could be a little revolution and what I'm looking forward with this
Ubuntu phone Os.

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MatthewPhillips
It's still a bummer that you're limited to basically C++ or QML (a weird
hybrid of css and javascript). Why no mobile OSes offer true language choice
is a mystery to me.

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viraptor
What do you mean by "limited to c++"? If you can run c++ apps, that means you
can write a short wrapper to any language / environment you want and use that
for the app itself.

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hamvocke
Link to the indiegogo project: [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-
edge](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge)

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appleflaxen
What I really want is to be able to buy one without having a PayPal account.

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hysan
I second this. I made an IndieGoGo account on the first day ready to drop $600
on the phone. But then stopped when I found out that I needed a Paypal account
for > $500 contributions. I'm even willing to support some of the newer lower
priced tiers but until there is a way to donate without Paypal, my wallet is
staying closed.

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dwild
You can't simply pay with your credit card on Paypal without an account?

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eloisant
Yes you can.

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RossM
Linked: [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-
edge](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge)

Looks like the new prices are $625, $675, $725 and $830 (USD).

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fosap
Could you explain why you use indiegogo? It seems to be a very expensive way
to fund such a big project. Have you considered alternatives or setting up
your own page?

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ZeroGravitas
This text doesn't make that much sense since it's missing the pricing table
image. You can see the full context at the top of this page currently:

[http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-
edge?c=activity](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=activity)

It looks like they intend to ramp up the price over small batches of 1,250 to
provide a more graduated incentive for people to get in early than their
previous 1st day only promotion. The first batch ($625 tier) is at 700/1250
sold already. (edit: and sold out < 1 hour later)

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yread
Let's see if it makes a difference on the funding speed

[http://movebits.net/2013/07/23/ubuntu-edge-funding-
level/](http://movebits.net/2013/07/23/ubuntu-edge-funding-level/)

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sspiff
For me, that page hasn't updated in ~12 hours. It would be nice if they
labeled their axis though, it's really annoying to figure out the scale at the
moment.

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Furzel
Has someone made available some statistics about average donation / day on
crowd funding platforms ? Like what's the average percentage of a project
backed after the first day ? after a week ? I only managed to find this
article partially related => [http://blog.indiegogo.com/2012/02/indiegogo-
insight-aim-to-r...](http://blog.indiegogo.com/2012/02/indiegogo-insight-aim-
to-raise-a-third-of-your-goal-within-the-first-quarter-of-your-campaign-
lifeti.html)

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philliphaydon
Funded. There was no way I was gonna fork out 860, but did it at 655. Hope
someone figures out how to get Windows Phone on the thing!

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Felix21
Windows Phone?

Why?

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bobbles
Shouldn't this be a link to the campaign?

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limmeau
HN submissions can't have both text and a link.

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mtgx
Can't they get some companies to order a few hundreds or thousands, too? Maybe
some European carriers or something (of course they'd have to guarantee money
back if they don't deliver). Ending this campaign successfully would help
their PR a lot.

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fpgeek
I believe that's the point of that $80k enterprise tier.

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zimbatm
If it's a limited edition, how good will device support be after a couple of
years ?

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shurane
If everything from the radio to the bootloader to other device drivers is open
source, I don't think keeping it updated will be a problem. Look at old
laptops and desktops that still work after slapping a Linux OS onto it.

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zimbatm
Where will you go to replace the open-sourced broken glass ?

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rs232
I've been trying to contribute for over a day now, and I only get the message
"We can't process your payment right now, so please try again later. We're
sorry for the inconvenience."

In the meantime, the price is rising... Grr.

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miga
Good way to probe for most acceptable pricing level before project design is
finalized.

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wavesounds
Is there HDMI out and bluetooth support? I'm waiting for someone to merge the
laptop/desktop/cellphone divide into one unit, this seems like this has the
potential to be that unit.

Also will this just work on all carriers?

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alexose
There's definitely been an uptick in sales. Here's my graph:

[http://alexose.com/images/2013-07-24_094402.png](http://alexose.com/images/2013-07-24_094402.png)

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shurane
Useful! Can you project the amount raised at the end of the campaign without
today's added perks? It looks like $500,000 USD a day from the graph, so only
$14.5 million without some bigger incentives? :\

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chmike
Will it be possible to use device as a phone with Ubuntu as Os or will it have
to be running Android to use the device as a phone ?

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takluyver
They're putting a lot of effort into making a touchscreen version of Ubuntu
for phones and tablets, so I don't think you'll need to use Android.

