On the pre-production status

[Bruce Wayne 65]

I just received mail for device will be shiped in February...payment date 8 Aug.

[silversolver 849]

On 1/23/2020 at 2:29 PM, EskeRahn said:

Well given that the highest number reported in the hand of a user was 225, when we know that only about 10% were produced, I would guess you are not far off, though pessimistic, depending on whether larger numbers in the 10% exist but did not report. (We know that 275 is in the new batch, so less than that)

And of course how sharp the number 10% we deduced actually is (as 70%/(1+6) where the 6 does not have to be 6.00 but could be anything between 5.5 and 6.5. And the 70% could be rough too, so the "10" could be roughly anything between 9 and 13,

So summing up anywhere between 225/.13 and 274/.09 that is in an interval about 1750 to 3000.

Highest in the wild is now 1009. I have no idea what, if anything, that means to your math. :)

[EskeRahn 5,471]

5 hours ago, silversolver said:

Highest in the wild is now 1009. I have no idea what, if anything, that means to your math. 🙂

He He. Well we can not deduce much yet, as far from all of the 60% batch has been delivered. Though it of course adds a further lower limit since we know the total on its way from factory is 70%.

[npatel1050 132]

Up to 70% of orders are filled now, what's the plan for the rest of them? When will they start production again?

What will the ordering process look like once all pre-orders are filled?

[Siani_8 105]

So apparently I didn't make the big 70% even though I paid on August 2nd for US order and people that paid after me in the US have gotten stock assignment.  Guess I'll add that to the growing list of things I was told that turned out to not be true from this company.v  They have told us for months now it was in order of payment date right? Seriously considering cancelling for the first time since pre-ordering.

[Noir 112]

1 hour ago, npatel1050 said:

Up to 70% of orders are filled now, what's the plan for the rest of them? When will they start production again?

What will the ordering process look like once all pre-orders are filled?

The rest of the pre-orders is scheduled to be produced after the end of CNY, meaning a new batch should be ready mid to end of February.

[B.X 19]

On 1/23/2020 at 1:29 PM, EskeRahn said:

So summing up anywhere between 225/.13 and 274/.09 that is in an interval about 1750 to 3000.

I can confirm that there are significantly less than 3000 total orders, including all the early pre-orders that never got paid.  Your lower bound is possible but would mean that an insanely high percentage of the pre-orders from back when you didn't have to pay to get an order number would have had to have been paid.  I'd say that your lower bound is a bit high as an upper bound and the lower bound could be a little below 1000 but that would be a mighty pessimistic estimate.  My honest expectation is that there are noticeably above 1000 paid orders at this point.  Another data point is that the new paid order volume is currently hovering around two per day and only had a short bump upwards when the December deliveries started happening.  The January deliveries don't seem to have had any impact on new order volume.  I expect the next  significant volume increase will be when the Pro1 is in stock for immediate shipping and that that bump will be huge, maybe even a hundred a day for a short time.

My hope is that with as many as around 800 Pro1 in the wild by the end of January, the recognition will increase and sales volumes will eventually stabilize at some volume high enough to support F(x)tec long term as a small niche maker of a specialty device.  I don't think the $750 price point is sustainable even if it's over 100% markup on per unit manufacturing costs, so if you're on the fence it might be a good time to order now while the price is low and the delivery window is shorter than the chargeback window for normal credit cards.

If you have a device (or will soon) then get out and promote it, show it off, talk about it online, help F(x)tec get their volume up and be a viable business so that you can buy the Pro2 when you eventually want to replace your wonderful Pro1.

[silversolver 849]

1 hour ago, B.X said:

I can confirm that there are significantly less than 3000 total orders, including all the early pre-orders that never got paid.  Your lower bound is possible but would mean that an insanely high percentage of the pre-orders from back when you didn't have to pay to get an order number would have had to have been paid.  I'd say that your lower bound is a bit high as an upper bound and the lower bound could be a little below 1000 but that would be a mighty pessimistic estimate.  My honest expectation is that there are noticeably above 1000 paid orders at this point.  Another data point is that the new paid order volume is currently hovering around two per day and only had a short bump upwards when the December deliveries started happening.  The January deliveries don't seem to have had any impact on new order volume.  I expect the next  significant volume increase will be when the Pro1 is in stock for immediate shipping and that that bump will be huge, maybe even a hundred a day for a short time.

My hope is that with as many as around 800 Pro1 in the wild by the end of January, the recognition will increase and sales volumes will eventually stabilize at some volume high enough to support F(x)tec long term as a small niche maker of a specialty device.  I don't think the $750 price point is sustainable even if it's over 100% markup on per unit manufacturing costs, so if you're on the fence it might be a good time to order now while the price is low and the delivery window is shorter than the chargeback window for normal credit cards.

If you have a device (or will soon) then get out and promote it, show it off, talk about it online, help F(x)tec get their volume up and be a viable business so that you can buy the Pro2 when you eventually want to replace your wonderful Pro1.

Agreeing with most of that in principle, except that serial 1009 has been reported in the wild. 🙂

Edited January 26, 2020 by silversolver

[B.X 19]

3 minutes ago, silversolver said:

Agreeing with most of that in principle, except that serial 1009 has been reported in the wild. 🙂

There were prototypes which were given serial numbers.  That accounts for a few.  The remaining discrepancy may be a small failure rate and those defects having received serial numbers.  There may have been other reasons for skipping serial numbers that I'm not aware of.   I specifically said "as many as around 800" because we don't know the exact number of units shipped.  We did see a picture of a pallet of boxes that could have had as many as 600 phones on it and we had between 100 and 200 units that we were pretty sure had been delivered before that pallet picture.  If you want to assume there are 1009 units minus the prototypes with no skipped or failed units, that still doesn't come up to 1750 as the upper bound, 1000/0.70 is 1429 which is significantly below 1750.  I do acknowledge that 1750 is an unlikely but possible upper bound based on the order number list that I have.  The primary point was that 3000 was impossible because there simply are not that many order numbers in the system even if we assume a 100% payment rate on the first about 6 months of pre-orders before they started only taking orders with payment.  Being more generous, 1000 sets of components in the initial bulk purchase with a 95% yield (really high) would be 950 units shipped, 100% assembled prior to CNY is again 950 units shipped, 70% completed is 950/0.70 or 1357 which is a pretty generous upper bound to me but would represent a massively non-standard cart conversion rate even more generous than the very high 33% rate I've been using in my estimates.  I personally would be surprised if these components were anything other than grey market and 95% success on grey market modules would be really really good, but I don't know for a fact that these are grey market so we're deep into just my opinion there.  Approaching this from all different directions yields numbers that are all surprisingly close together and the exact number doesn't really matter, if we say 1200 paid orders plus or minus 200, we're most likely right. 

The implications of this sales volume are far more important than 20% here or there.  Can a cell phone manufacturer survive on under a million dollars the first year of sales when development costs are as high as they are and probably had to be financed.  This phone has about 5 radios with a cost of at least $15k per radio for certifications so $75k just to get that piece of paper and that's one of only many expensive things they had to pay for.  Assuming 100% markup certification represents around 15% of their first year budget not counting any finance costs.  I sure hope that this phone is actually based on another phone so that much of that 15% of budget might go away.  If it is, I'd love to know what one because it could be a source for repair parts down the road and that could be a really big deal. I imagine that the slider took a hard month of engineering time, at $250 an hour (really cheap), that's $43k.  Maybe Chen is a mechanical engineer and he did this personally, or maybe his partner is.  It came out great but even if they did it themselves, I bet it was expensive and 10% of the budget isn't unlikely.  Craig and mccreary convinced me that all but the CPU board are custom boards, that's a lot of electronic engineering time, 2 months of hours would be conservative, another $85K or 20%.  That keyboard is really nice, 15%???  25%??? of budget.  The list goes on, we haven't looked at software or supply chain or distribution or even feeding Chen or getting him on flights.   It all adds up fast and I sure hope the banker isn't standing at the door awaiting his million.

[david 929]

2 hours ago, B.X said:

or even feeding Chen

LOL :-)

[EskeRahn 5,471]

21 hours ago, silversolver said:

Agreeing with most of that in principle, except that serial 1009 has been reported in the wild. 🙂

Note that this is NOT from he first 10%, in contrast to the 225.

...And in contrast to @B.X claim the prototypes did NOT have a serial number. Even my 'Final sample' from just before production did not.

(So if one wants to included these, those could be added to my estimates).

[Slion 1,201]

22 hours ago, B.X said:

I sure hope that this phone is actually based on another phone so that much of that 15% of budget might go away.  If it is, I'd love to know what one because it could be a source for repair parts down the road and that could be a really big deal.

The display panel is from Elephone U. Motherboard, chipset, antennas, battery, cameras, sensors are certainly off the shelves. Housing, keyboard, mechanical parts and connection cables are likely custom made.

Edited January 27, 2020 by Slion

[Slion 1,201]

22 hours ago, B.X said:

I imagine that the slider took a hard month of engineering time, at $250 an hour (really cheap), that's $43k.  Maybe Chen is a mechanical engineer and he did this personally, or maybe his partner is.  It came out great but even if they did it themselves, I bet it was expensive and 10% of the budget isn't unlikely.

The slider is originally from Nokia E7. My understanding is that they had guys from the Nokia E7 team working on the Pro1.

AFAIK @chen started working on the Motomod keyboard possibly at least 3 years ago maybe more.

Edited January 27, 2020 by Slion

[Slion 1,201]

22 hours ago, B.X said:

It all adds up fast and I sure hope the banker isn't standing at the door awaiting his million.

They obviously had significant investments one way or another.

Edited January 27, 2020 by Slion

[silversolver 849]

9 minutes ago, Slion said:

They obviously had significant investments one way or another.

That's why we all need to buy three apiece and get our friends to also buy three apiece. :)

I have to say, @sequestris got 7 more people to order the thing. If each of us did that, well, the future is bright for clacks. :)

[Shilor 71]

@silversolver

i would gladly do that, but..

😉

[Slion 1,201]

4 minutes ago, Shilor said:

i would gladly do that, but..

Make sure you are ready when it comes. It's that awesome! 🥳

[Akun 10]

Damn, the low numbers of produced phone (around 1000) make me think the situation is far worst than I expected.

Pro1 is basically a failure and a scam, on July 31st when most people paid for a phone that should have shipped weeks later, the "factory process" was not even started or even founded.

And what factory build 1000 phones in 5 monthes, that's 6 phones a day ?

If you add to this all the customs issues, and now the China epidemic crisis, and the 70% batch may really be the last one.

 

 

[sdx 45]

10 minutes ago, Akun said:

Damn, the low numbers of produced phone (around 1000) make me think the situation is far worst than I expected.

Pro1 is basically a failure and a scam, on July 31st when most people paid for a phone that should have shipped weeks later, the "factory process" was not even started or even founded.

And what factory build 1000 phones in 5 monthes, that's 6 phones a day ?

If you add to this all the customs issues, and now the China epidemic crisis, and the 70% batch may really be the last one.

 

 

Iteration #236 of the same message "It's all lies!"? 🙂 I can confirm I have a working (but not perfect) device very similar to what's been promised in my hand today. So I can surely say it's not a total scam. Sure, there might be a "ponzi sceme" effect here, but at least I made the cut! 😛

[Robert 12]

Any estimation when the status changes from Processing to something else for Order #473xx

[Akun 10]

29 minutes ago, sdx said:

Sure, there might be a "ponzi sceme" effect here, but at least I made the cut! 😛

It s definitely a "Ponzi scheme", now let s see how far they will go with it, because they will certainly ran out of money sooner than later.

[agent008 243]

If it was a Ponzi scheme, I think it would already have been bust. I really don't believe they would be getting enough new orders to keep producing phones for older orders. And yet the phones are (though slowy) being manufactured and shipped.

[EskeRahn 5,471]

1 hour ago, agent008 said:

If it was a Ponzi scheme, I think it would already have been bust. I really don't believe they would be getting enough new orders to keep producing phones for older orders. And yet the phones are (though slowy) being manufactured and shipped.

Yes. these wild conspiracy theories are getting a bit tiresome. You really have to have a Donald brain to think that they would produce and send well over a thousand extra units if they planned to run.
 

I guess the next wave of posts we will see from these guys are that F(x)tec is behind the Corona virus, as an excuse for not delivering 🤪😱

[is 65]

3 minutes ago, EskeRahn said:

Yes. these wild conspiracy theories are getting a bit tiresome. You really have to have a Donald brain to think that they would produce and send well over a thousand extra units if they planned to run.
 

I guess the next wave of posts we will see from these guys are that F(x)tec is behind the Corona virus, as an excuse for not delivering 🤪😱

Where's the downvote comment button when you need it 🙂

[EskeRahn 5,471]

8 minutes ago, is said:

Where's the downvote comment button when you need it 🙂

Yes could have been handy, I only got a delete button, but I think that would be overkill. Despite some of the accusations could be seen as slander I leave some slack for rants, unless the staff feels otherwise.