ZTE has cancelled its Hawkeye campaign on Kickstarter as it goes back to the drawing board. The company has been experimenting with crowdsourcing its next smartphone. An endeavour that has gone less smoothly than it was hoping.
The Chinese company had hoped to completely crowdsource its Hawkeye phone; which included asking its small community of fans to come up with new ideas for the product. Two relatively innovative features were chosen and the phone was revealed at CES earlier this year.
Despite this, potential backers were disappointed at the specifications of the device. The Kickstarter campaign listed mid-range hardware instead of the top-of-the-line internals that many were hoping for.
ZTE had initially hoped to save the crowdfunding campaign by asking people what kind of specifications they want. A move that hasn’t quite provided the kind of attention that the company was hoping for, as the Kickstarter page was taken offline late last week.
Still, ZTE is not yet done with crowdsourcing. ZTE’s vice president of technology and planning Jeff Yee told Engadget that the company is still committed to releasing the Hawkeye. Cancelling the Kickstarter was simply a move to allow the backers to receive their refunds sooner.
Of course, this setback will further delay the ZTE Hawkeye. Although, that many not be an entirely bad thing. The company is hoping to ship the future device with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. A chip that happens to be in short supply at the moment.
There’s still hope for ZTE’s crowdsourcing plans. More importantly, the company has moved quickly to address the shortcomings with its plans, which is all we can really hope for when it comes to anything that requires interacting with an online community.
[Source: Engadget]
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