Our focus, purpose and goal.

[Yousif Abdullah]

Hello!

My name is Yousif and I'm a creative 19-year-old individual in
Finland. I'm hoping to study languages at Helsinki university later
this year, but in the meantime I'm enjoying my hobby as a
photographer. I'm a "self-grown" software developer as well. Nice to
meet you!

Let me just say that this is without a doubt a great project. I love
the idea of creating a phone with the help of the community and I
truly appreciate Jan's effort in trying to make this thought a
reality. If we truly want to succeed however, a Google group alone
won't help much. As OWOP becomes larger, we need strict guidelines and
a structural body that keeps everything together. For this purpose, I
have identified three key areas that we need to discuss. Our focus,
purpose and goal.

1. Focus.

Right now OWOP is nothing but a fancy name for a project. What we need
to focus on first is gathering support. In other words, we need people
to know about us. We have to find a way to make our intentions known
and picked up by the likes of Engadget and The Verge, as well as
Mobile Nations. We also need a fresh public image that will encourage
people to volunteer and help us. Several rules for styling need to be
set; e.g. we should write "webOS" and not "WebOS". I also suggest that
we come up with a video clip to help us gather the support we need. We
could put it up on Kickstarter for example.

2. Purpose.

Jan made a great start with his business plan, but I don't completely
agree with his approach. For example, Jan lists Samsung, Nokia, Apple,
HTC, LG, Motorola, Huawei, ZTE and RIM (BlackBerry) as the competition
that OWOP will face. This implies that OWOP is looking to create a
product for the mass market, which in my opinion is a bad idea. If
OWOP is going to be a nonprofit organization, going after the "big
players" from the start is a failure just waiting to happen. To me,
OWOP means creating webOS phones for the community, by the community.
We are not trying to "revive" Palm or HP, and we have to understand
that we're not going to fill the void that HP has left, simply because
we are not HP.

Another point that catched my interest is Jan's suggestion of
licensing OpenMobile’s ACL (Application Compatibility Layer) to tackle
the lack of apps. I believe that we should instead focus on our unique
strengths and what makes us special. If we were to license
OpenMobile's ACL to run Android applications on our upcoming phones,
why would anyone be interested in particularly our phones over a
regular Android handset?

3. Goal.

As with any project, certain challenges and risks are involved. One
such challenge is finding a suitable Chinese smartphone manufacturer
willing to make a joint venture with us. Another option would be to
get in talks with the Openmoko team (http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/
Main_Page) and discuss the possibility of designing a webOS phone
around the GTA04 motherboard. However, my question is: then what?

My vision is to create a phone that people enjoy to use, regardless of
the number of apps. Of all people, the webOS community in particular
should know that apps aren't everything; overall user experience is
more important. If you need a recent example, take a look at Nokia's
accomplishments with the N9—German news magazine Stern thought the N9
was so good, it advised its readers to go on a vacation to a
neighboring country to check out the N9, despite the lack of apps.
(You can find the original German article here:
http://www.stern.de/digital/telefon/smartphone-nokia-n9-exotisches-one-hit-wonder-1770646.html).
If we can push the idea forward that a phone with aggregated services,
simple multitasking and an intuitive UI is better than a phone with
thousands of apps, then I believe that we have accomplished our goal.
If we can optimize webOS to run adequately on mid-range hardware and
sell it at accessible price points, even better.

So, what do you think? I'm personally very excited about OWOP and I'm
looking forward to working with people all around the world, sharing
the same mindset and passion for webOS as I do.

Peace,
Yousif.

[janthiemen]

Hi,

Off course, it's nice to see another webOS fan. I agree with almost all your point, excepted from the second one. I think the only possible way to get great webOS smartphones to us, for an affordable price, is to take them in mass production. That's also the problem OpenMoko, and the GTA04 board are facing. They just can't sell enough of their hardware to get an affordable price. The price in group tour, for a GTA04 board is almost €500. And then you only have a board, no battery, no case and even no display, it's only a motherboard replacement. Also, I think, we should bring webOS hardware to the normal consumer. Therefore we should compete with big company's. Consumers should find us by good reviews, on tech websites. This might also make it easier for us to find a Chinese partner, as this might mean real profits for them.

We might not be able fill the void that HP has left, but we do might be able to produce a smooth working phone, with good hardware, and the best mobile OS ever made, to the normal consumers, and bring good, affordable webOS phones to our community. If we succeed in this, we might also be able to hire some software developers, to improve webOS, and to add more features. Of course the volunteers can do much with the os, but I think they simply won't have the time to make major improvements to the platform.

I have to agree with your other points. We need to be structured, have our own identity, including logo's, website, etc. We also need to be a registered organization, as that makes it easier for us to raise funds and contact partners.

I also have to agree about your point that an intuitive UI is better than a phone with thousands of apps. But if we do want to release it commercial, so we can get a more fundamental capital position and a accessible price, we don't only give people simple multitasking and an intuitive UI, we need to give them both, the multitasking and UI, and the thousands of apps. 

But this is just my opinion. I'm very curious to the opinion of others.

Jan

Op dinsdag 3 april 2012 21:11:43 UTC+2 schreef Yousif Abdullah het volgende:

[Yousif Abdullah]

Hello Jan,

Maybe my wording was poor, but my initial idea was to first have a working prototype and distribute it in limited quantities and then based on the feedback of our core working group, launch the product in full scale. To quote, I said: "going after the "big players" from the start is a failure just waiting to happen." I believe that in the long term, OWOP will need to enter the mass market and appeal to both consumers and developers. I think we both agree on what I said, it's just an issue of poor wording on my part. :)

[janthiemen]

Okay, then I indeed got it wrong. I have to agree with you, entering the mass market at once would certainly fail. I'm sorry that I mis understood you. Now I have to agree with all of your point. We should indeed organize the design team so they can start designing the logo's, etc. needed for our organization. Why don't you set the team up, as you're one of the designers?
Op woensdag 4 april 2012 10:01:05 UTC+2 schreef Yousif Abdullah het volgende:

[Khaled Fayez]

I seriously believe that there are 2 main things we should do right now, contacting the firefox boot2gecko team and see if they can just merge their os with ours cz that would be killer, and for opensource stuff firefox is killer. Second, we need to have someone on the open webos team at hp so we can channel everything to the core team behind it, hp failed miserably so they shouldn't be in control again of webos.

[Khaled Fayez]

As far as I can tell all what we can make money from assuming this is a profit orginaztion is selling more hardware, therefore we have to make our phone so flexible and open that everyone would run out and buy. To do this we can make the whole components and bootloader completly open source so u can use a manufacture quality tool to optimise your choice of os maybe android, we can advertise on this heavliy that this awesome phone lets u choose your os and it would be stock ics or jelly bean. and on the other hand getting webos up to snuff with competitors by having pirorities on software features cz no one is gonna buy webos at this state. There are lots of articles on how to make the perfect hardware that even guys on theverge.com would be amazed by. we shouldn't have webos as a liablity but as a chance to make enough money for it to rise. if we are going to market niche devices then we might as well quit now.

Best hardware ever; http://goo.gl/mUfGO http://goo.gl/TUNBh http://goo.gl/T76hl    webOS articles; http://goo.gl/nu7Wc http://goo.gl/zEVhD http://goo.gl/1wf96 http://goo.gl/3jRJr

On Tuesday, April 3, 2012 9:11:43 PM UTC+2, Yousif Abdullah wrote:

[Yousif Abdullah]

My Google Groups notification settings were off for some reason, sorry about that. I'd be honored to take the lead in the designer team. Will discuss more tomorrow on the Skype meeting.