[SwellJoe]

I have no idea who the customer is for this product.

I bought a C64U. I bought a MEGA65. I bought the T-shirt. I own nearly every original Commodore 8-bit. If anybody is the target market for Commodore products, I am the target market, and I am no more nostalgic about or interested in flip phones than I am about fax machines.

It's just like the good old days: Commodore execs shipping absurdly misguided products for the wrong price at the wrong time.

[crazygringo]

I think it's quite obvious that the target market has almost zero overlap with interest in the Commodore products from the 80s.

There's nothing wrong with a new company (new as of last year I think?) that owns the Commodore branding, and put out the C64U, to try putting out a new product for a different market.

The glowing Commodore icon just gives it a suitably vintage/retro feel that is aligned with the values of the device. Nothing more, nothing less.

In other words, is for a very specific group of people trying to digitally detox, who like a retro hardware aesthetic, that has nothing to do with C64 enthusiasts.

[SwellJoe]

I guess. But, I have a hard time believing that market is large enough, or wealthy enough, to support the custom manufacture of a luxury dumb phone.

I've been wrong about products before. But, I've been right more often. I'm confident this product will be a flop. I'll be surprised if it breaks even. Shocked if it makes a profit. And, unsurprised if it proves to be the undoing of the new Commodore before it really ever even gets off the starting block.

[ChrisRR]

The only target market is the nostalgic crowd. For everyone else there's already plenty of flip phones available

The problem is that even among the commodore/amiga crowd, the reception has been pretty uninterested

[layer8]

People who bought a Commodore typewriter in the 1950s probably weren’t particularly interested in the C64 in the 1980s either.

It would be more interesting to talk about the actual merits of the product.

[SwellJoe]

There aren't any merits to talk about. A flip phone is still a nostalgia play. If someone is nostalgic about flip phones, they're nostalgic about a Nokia, Commodore was long gone by the era of flip phones. And, you can still buy flip phones from a variety of manufacturers, including Nokia, for under $100. A dumb phone, including from reputable manufacturers, is extremely easy and cheap to come by, if that's what you want. A dumb phone is a commodity with many suppliers.

This product at this price is entirely about leveraging the Commodore brand, and it's leveraging the brand in an incoherent direction. If I thought they were making astronomical margins on a low upfront cost, I would think, "OK, fine, do your little experiment, though I don't like you degrading the brand for no good reason." But, I don't think they're going to make astronomical margins and I don't think the upfront cost is low. I think they're spending a lot of money on a product that will be a flop.

[dotancohen]

  > There aren't any merits to talk about. A flip phone is still a nostalgia play.

Not to everybody.

In my country we have a sizeable religious community which eschew the smartphone. Dumb phones sell here very well - on merit alone, no nostalgia.

[SwellJoe]

And, there's no shortage of those. Do those religious folks often buy luxury products?

[dotancohen]

I don't know the answer to that! I would imagine that some do. I'll try to talk to some of them, thank you for the point of view.

[AAAAaccountAAAA]

I don't think there are any particularly reputable brands of featurephones anymore. Nokia/HMD certainly isn't one: they have obnoxious bugs, they drop calls, and lack basic modern-day compatibility features like emoji in text messages (they display only an "unknown character" box) and group MMS.

However, it does not necessarily mean there is demand for a quality featurephone: it might be that the demand is so low that it does not make sense to manufacture one.

[thaanpaa]

Me. I like the idea behind the product very much. I feel like my AI-saturated brain needs something like this very much at the moment.

[StanislavPetrov]

>I have no idea who the customer is for this product.

Everyone who despises Google, Apple and all of the social media companies and wants absolutely no part of them. I'm going to buy one, along with several other people I know. The only thing that has prevented me from going full flip-phone so far is the lack of support for maps and QR scanning (which is unfortunately required if you want to park in some places or engage in certain activities).

As far as the cost goes, I shelled out $500 for an Android/Google phone that I don't like. That being the case, why would shelling out the same amount of money for a phone that isn't tied to one of the toxic tech companies be prohibitive?

Back in the day, I wasn't a fan of Commodore and didn't even own one! I was an Atari 8-bit guy. Hopefully they will cash in and release a similar phone stripped-down phone next year!