zlacker

>>erohea+(OP)
Hi Eric, I'm a hardware startup guy myself (our paths have crossed) with the distinction that my own "very specific set of skills" has been honed at smartphone megacompanies and smartphone startups. OSOM, Essential, HTC, Samsung, Apple. I've designed and built a lot of phones. I'm building one now. I think this is a noble effort, I personally prefer pocketable phones too, but I think there are nigh-insurmountable hurdles in your paths forward.

- 1. Supply chain / component R&D -

You will be very, very hard pressed to source a pre-existing, high quality, non-exclusive 5.4" display with a hole punch. If you end up doing this as your own startup then you're going to start by trying to buy off the shelf parts to keep costs down. But that display you want is simply not on any of the development roadmaps for the major component manufacturers. The industry has its own momentum, and the component suppliers have also been looking at the trendlines so they are building bigger and bigger.

If you can't find the screen you want in a catalogue then you have to pay someone to build it. Convincing BOE et. al that your phone will sell enough to pay off R&D costs is unlikely, so be prepared to pay several million bucks in NRE to make it worth their time (it might still not be) and the wait a year for them to spin up the fabs. So ~$5M and 9-18 months later you have a display.

- 2. Big players are uninterested, not uninformed -

Big companies are drowning in market data. They know some people really, really want small phones. But it's a long-tail opportunity they're willfully ignoring, and people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly. I've been in the meetings, small phone advocacy goes nowhere.

Also I'm a little surprised you're hoping an online petition will work after your prior experience trying to influence your acquirers. I presume you saw the inside of Fitbit / Google and how decisions are made...

>>davee5+5r
“and people who need phones will still buy something even if reluctantly“

So true... And my anecdotal observation suggest another detail that makes small unattractive to brands: the way my social circles happen to be, I crossed path with plenty of owners of various incarnations of the Xperia Compact (r.i.p.). If my observations where representative, the Compacts would come close to outnumbering iPhones. They all wanted a small phone, somewhat waterproof and with a reasonably good camera. Almost all of them identifying strongly with some outdoor hobby like cycling or rock climbing, but wouldn't want a dedicated "outdoor" or "sports" phone. So far so good, looks like a pattern. But they have another thing in common: none of them would ever consider buying a high end phone (the Compacts were, or reasonably close) at or near release price.