Friday, August 02, 2013

Ubuntu Edge nears $8m in contributions

After nearly 2 weeks the Ubuntu Edge project finally looks like it'll reach $8m. In the past week Canonical's added a few minor incentives.

Ubuntu Edge Referral Contest

Contributors can participate to stand a chance of winning a personalised Ubuntu Edge. Contributors that didn't get a phone perk because it's too expensive could still get one. I'm not sure how that helps encourage people to contribute $830 though.

Ubuntu Edge T-Shirt

For $50 you get a T-shirt and your name on the Founders list. That's quite the expensive T-shirt.

LastPass free for one year

Every Edge comes with one year free LastPass Premium subscription.

Maybe Canonical could take some ideas from Torment and do something like "match 10% of the contribution from $8m to $9m (total $100k)".

If they hadn't set such a lofty target then they could even have added better features through milestone goals. Something like "we'll make the phone with $25m but if we reach $28m we'll upgrade the 8MP camera to 10MP". Or, maybe they could add a stretch goal beyond $32m like "best octa core processor instead of quad core if we make $35m".

One can only dream...

Just to be clear I have no idea the costs involved in making a smartphone so these are merely my own random ideas. Still, it'd be nice to see perks that are more inspiring than referrals or T-shirts. This is supposed to be a bleeding edge limited edition superphone, right?

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