Kickstarter and IndieGogo have changed our world for the better. They have given many people the opportunity to validate their ideascrazy or not, and have been responsible for new market segments such as smart watches (Pebble) or virtual reality (Oculus).
These successes have also been punctuated by resounding failures, and some of them have occurred in the field of smartphones. Brands like Ubuntu, ZTE or Meizu have offered their vision to the world of what the future of smartphones could be and the response has been unanimous: those projects failed because they don’t make (too much) sense. At least not when they appeared or in the way they did.
Ubuntu Edge and the search for convergence
One of the great failures in this field was that of Canonical, the company responsible for the development of Ubuntu. This Linux distribution is the most popular on the market, and already in 2013 aspired to become a converged platform and universal that will work not only on PCs or laptops, but also on phones.
That was what led those responsible to launch the Ubuntu Edge phone project on IndieGogo. His goal was enormously ambitious, because They were looking to raise $32 million..
The idea was too, and it offered a terminal with high-end specifications (among other things, with 128 GB of storage, something extraordinary for the time) that allowed it to become a PC by connecting it to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. As we have seen later, this idea is feasible and interesting, but not even giants like Samsung with DeX or Huawei with its PC mode have so far made it work.
Canonical did not achieve its goal, but still managed to raise virtually – the funds returned to their investors – nearly 13 million dollars from stakeholders -I was one of them-. The world was not ready for that concept. Not yet. Canonical kept trying to bet on convergence in the following years, but abandoned the idea in 2017.
ZTE Hawkeye, the phone made by and for users
Precisely at that time ZTE also tried to take advantage of Kickstarter to tempt users with a terminal called Hawkeye, a smartphone that was curious because the manufacturer would manufacture a mobile based on the ideas of the user community.
The so-called Project CSX was born precisely with that ambition, but although ZTE had a good idea when making that proposal, they ended up starting a crowdfunding campaign for a terminal that did not respond to many of the suggestions of the users.
In fact, instead of having a high-end mobile with advanced features, ZTE opted for an almost entry-level mobile with a price of 199 dollars that basically stood out for a eye tracking system.
That Kickstarter project was canceled shortly after: the goal was to raise $500,000 and only 32,000 were raisedwhich made ZTE itself deactivate the campaign after a few days and explain that they had made mistakes in that way of carrying out the project.
Beyond that cancellation, perhaps listen to users it wasn’t such a good idea. A phone that sticks to the walls? No thanks.
Another thing is that proposal to offer a device whose features are voted on by userssomething that, for example, has worked in the surprising rival of the Surface Pro, the Eve V that was born in this way in IndieGogo.
Meizu, we want our ports back
The last of those great failures has been suffered by Meizu, which at the beginning of the year took the fashion of phones with screens without frames further: now completely dispensed with connection ports and cables with your Meizu Zero.
The idea seemed too risky even with interesting elements. The eSIM card made the SIM slot unnecessary, connectivity Bluetooth 5.0 and wireless charging they contributed their part and even the speakers disappeared thanks to a screen that acted that way.
The idea also tried to be validated on IndieGogo, but of the 100,000 dollars sought -a very modest goal- only 46,000 were raised. The failure was not entirely resounding taking into account that we are talking about a terminal with a price of 1,300 dollars, but even so, Meizu wanted to play the mistake.
Its CEO, Jack Wong, recently indicated that this was nothing more than “a publicity stunt by its marketing department.” We did not quite believe it -in Mashable they saw it at MWC19 in prototype form-, but once again something important was verified: an idea like this is validated with money, and the people spoke clearly: the Meizu Zero made no sense either. Not yet.
The Turing Phone was a blatant fraud
In July 2015 we talked about the Turing Phone, “the most resistant and secure smartphone in the world” according to its creators. The proposal was striking and proposed a mobile that was similar in many ways to other models of its generation. It had a 5.5-inch screen, a Snapdragon 801, 3 GB of RAM, and a 13-megapixel rear camera. So far everything normal.
What was really new was its casing, made of a material its developers called liquidmorphium. An alloy of copper, zirconium, aluminium, nickel and silver that provided it with great structural resistance.
Not only that: the integrated security system promised to make it impassablebut its launch – not directly on Kickstarter, but with its own reservation model that adapted that same idea – ended up being a disaster.
In fact, it did not stop suffering significant delays and changes: it stopped being based on Android to theoretically use Sailfish OS, but in 2018, years after the announcement, the company ended up declaring bankruptcy after taking the money from those who believed in the idea.
Kickstarter also gets some curious projects off the ground
Not all have been resounding failures: in 2016 a project called Robin wanted to create a smartphone specially based on cloud services with which its creators raised more than 1.3 million dollars on Kickstarter.
The company that launched the project, Nextbit, had already started its concept two years earlier in secret mode, ended up being bought by Razer after very discreet sales and model withdrawal.
Razer took advantage of the resources of this company to get fully into the field of smartphones for gamerswhere later their proposals have been striking but they face an uncertain future.
Has been some other additional hit like Jelly, “the smallest 4G smartphone in the world”, which after a successful financing campaign —achieved 1.25 million dollars— continues to be sold with additional and increasingly powerful versions. The company also recently launched a new model, the Atom XL, and its success has also been remarkable.
Other unique concepts such as the Light mobiles —two models already, both successes on Indiegogo— have also been relevant as examples of products that do solve a problem for some users: Even when they cannot compete with the big manufacturers, they have managed to propose a different alternative.
In September 2019, the Teracube project was launched on Kickstarter, a mobile phone with a curious idea: to have a guarantee on parts, performance, labor and battery that guaranteed that the mobile would last (at least) four years. Very similar to the Fairphone 3 in its orientation, of course.
The campaign was a modest success, but the project has continued and after the first model, the Teracube One, the firm has launched the Teracube 2e, which was launched on Indiegogo and had more than 2,400 users who bet on the project.
Pasta talks, but sometimes it’s wrong
These three stories show that even well-resourced companies have turned to Kickstarter or Indiegogo as a way to validate their ideas. It is very easy to “like” or put a positive comment on a product idea, but it is much more difficult invest (or should we say bet?) our money on those ideas.
In fact, this economic validation is what really governs the future of those crazy and wonderful projects. Not everything is joy in these services, of course.
There have been numerous campaigns that, after being successfully financed have left their users disappointed for waiting times, for products that in the end did not meet expectations or, even worse, with fraud that left people without their money and without their products.
It is the clear danger for platforms that try to protect themselves from these scams and frauds and that despite this show that a good idea (and a good execution) can be successful and change the industry and solve problems that they did not have. Those smartphones may not have solved any fundamental problems, but they certainly set guidelines that could be recovered in the future. Who knows.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism