Cast your mind back a few months to February, when we encountered a ridiculous Energizer-branded smartphone at MWC.
Do you remember how thick it was?
And do you remember how, deep down, you kinda wanted one?
Well, Ive got some bad news for you.
Its dead in the water.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Overall, the company raised $15,005 of its $1.2 million goal.
Thats about 1.2 percent of what it hoped for.
In terms of orders, things are grim.
Avenir Telecom sold just a mere seven P18K phones with its super-discounted early bird pricing.
In addition, three people bought a triple-pack of the handsets.
In total, Avenir Telecom sold sixteen (absolute) units.
Im putting sold in inverted commas, because everyone who backed the campaign should be getting a full refund.
Thats because, to its credit, the Gallic phone maker used a fixed funding goal.
This meant that the project would only receive funds if it broke past the original goal.
That notwithstanding, sixteen phones is an undeniably miserable figure.
Its arguably a historical failure.
For context,Microsoft sold 503 units of its ill-fated Kin phonebefore Steve Ballmer eventually euthanized it.The Kin.
Indiegogo Postmortem
So, why did the P18K fail?
Its an important question.
I dont think its because Avenir Telecom was targeting a small niche.
Other manufacturers have managed to make a success of selling high-capacity smartphones.
Weve covered some of these in the past.
It likely didnt help that the battery was the only thing that really stood out for the P18K.
Make no mistake, there are people who would benefit from a phone with a 18,000 mAh battery.
In short, anyone who is likely to spend long periods of time without access to mains power.
Avenir did nothing to cater to this valuable niche.
Then theres the price.
Avenir Telecom wanted 600 for a phone with the internals of a 200 phone.
Without anything extra like ruggedization thats a hard sell.
It just didnt represent good value for customers.
Another problem was the branding.
When it eventually hit Indiegogo, the Energizer branding was completely stripped away for reasons that remain unclear.
Ultimately, this did nothing to engender confidence in the project.
The P18K received a mountain of coverage from all corners of the technology press.
From my perspective, people were more interested in the P18K than theSamsung Galaxy Foldor theHuawei Mate X.
That didnt translate into paying customers, however.
Dont get me wrong.
Weird can sell things that otherwise would lack substance.
Just ask anyone who bought Sea Monkeys in the 1960s or bought a ticket to seeSwiss Army Manin 2016.
But those are small-ticket items, and not a 600 smartphone.
Heres a fun fact for you: Avenir is the French word for future.
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