Quote:
|
Originally Posted by kacir
Do you remember iRex company refusing to sell us the Iliad?
There was bloody revolution on MobileRead forum.
Some people have worked themselves into a frenzy over wanting to buy the device. Phoning to iRex, organizing campains, complaining, bickering, pleading, threatening, wailing ...
Mobileread: "WE WANT TO BUY ILIAD!"
iRex: "well, guys, we do not think it is a good idea. You see, it is still a beta product and it might not work as advertized"
Mobileread: "WE WANT TO BUY IT ANYWAY! YOU PROMISED TO HAVE IT READY BY NOW!"
iRex: "Let us sell it first to content providers and corporate customers first to test the unit"
|
...and all of this would not make much business sense if they were trying to release a consumer-oriented product in competition with the Sony Reader. If this had been the case they would probably have released the SDK and sources
before they released the hardware.
However, take a step back and think.... Supposing that they never intended Iliad to be a consumer product. Say they intended it to be 95% sales to businesses with custom software and custom content tailored to the need of large organisations. But they didn't have the staff to ensure that the product was fully beta-tested to the standard needed for business.
So... they could have announced the product to the world in the hope that some fervent early-adopters would do their beta-testing for them. Such people had to promise that they'd be happy with a beta machine, no sdk and an enormous pricetag.
This would then make very good business sense. They would have no need for an open-source community effort as their target market wouldn't be interested in it. The battery life would settle gently at 1 business day. The SDK would arrive one day down the road, but without any serious internal access to the machine (FTP maybe if you're really really lucky, more likely restricted to a proprietary sandbox). Perhaps they'd even delay until forced to release - which might take several years - possibly enough time for their investors to achieve an exit.
Of course all of the above is wild speculation, and I really really hope that I'm wrong. But this smells badly of the Psion Netbook Pro - and I'm scared that the Iliad will go the same way...