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Red Hydrogen Two confirmed despite first phone's failure
While Red's first foray into the smartphone market failed to live up to the digital cinematography company's stellar reputation, its founder Jim Jannard has today confirmed that a much-improved follow-up to the troubled Red Hydrogen One handset is in the works.
In a candid post on Red's own H4Vuser.net forums, Jannard placed most of the blame for the Hydrogen One's failings on an unnamed Chinese ODM (Original Design Manufacturer), saying, "Getting our ODM in China to finish the committed features and fix known issues on the HYDROGEN One has proven to be beyond challenging. Impossible actually."
However, it appears the phone's successor is on the right track, with Jannard explaining that "after months of vetting a new design to manufacture [in-]house, we have begun the work on the HYDROGEN Two, virtually from scratch, at a new ODM that is clearly more capable of building and supporting the product we (and our customers) demand."
Also at Ars Technica.
Previously: RED Pitches a $1,200 Holographic Android Smartphone
$1,300 RED Hydrogen One Smartphone Fails to Impress Reviewers
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday July 30 2019, @08:04PM (7 children)
It's a company involved in manufacturing other tech products:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Digital_Cinema [wikipedia.org]
So you would think they have a handle on it. But smartphones are a different arena, and the market is very saturated so you need to at least attempt to match others on price.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 30 2019, @08:53PM (5 children)
They may have believed the ODM when they asked "Can you make this thing like this"? and the people at the ODM said "yes, of course" when the real answer was "no, not really".
The unwillingness to say no is a common thing in China and a lesson everyone who tries to manufacture there has to learn.
I am sure Apple (for example) have a huge team there doing quality control.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rupert Pupnick on Tuesday July 30 2019, @10:46PM (3 children)
Generally true in my experience with many Asian business cultures. It’s part of what you’d be expected to understand, however, if you were in charge of the business plan and evaluation of ODM candidates. Also, your people should be trained to manage them appropriately once selected. It’s a failure of Red’s management to let it get out of control.
Also, why not name the ODM? It’s surely not a secret. Maybe the Chinese ODM would have something to say in its defense that might not reflect well on Red?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday July 30 2019, @11:54PM (2 children)
Yeah, that "not saying no to the customer, even if it's the correct answer" thing is hardly a secret in Asian cultures so it sounds like management failure from Red to me.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday July 31 2019, @01:42AM (1 child)
It's not just in Asia, it's very rare to find a salesperson who knows when to say no. I was at a talk a few days ago where the speaker mentioned they were approach by a potential customer to do some work. They initially responded that they'd do it on a time&materials basis, meaning guaranteed several years work on this sucking chest wound of a project. After further discussion they told the customer, and I quote, "you cannot pay us enough to do this work for you". Members of the audience then pointed out how unusual it was to respond in this manner, because most companies would have taken the work anyway.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday July 31 2019, @02:12AM
Oh yeah. We have a salesdude just like that. Constantly selling product to customers for stupid margins, or when they're already not paying on time.
Guy has no commercial sense at all.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Wednesday July 31 2019, @01:37AM
It's not just that, it's a company with no previous experience in smartphones getting into what they presumably thought was an easy, lucrative market. Mass-producing smart phones is a long, long way from creating artisanal $50-80,000 cameras. Blaming China for their failure to deliver is easy, and in the current political climate very acceptable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday July 30 2019, @09:39PM
This whole project looks like they are slapping their name and price markup on a cheap Chinese phone. Again.
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