i-mate company for sale - General Topics

It looks like i-mate are about to go to the dogs, very sad really as it was a i-mate jam that got me into this scene all those years ago.....
Full story is here > http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2027836e-c38e-11dc-b083-0000779fd2ac.html
Sorry if this has been already posted somewhere, but I couldnt find it anywhere.

Yes real sad firstly because one less competitor to HTC no matter how insignificant it was and secondly because I was so anxiously looking forward to the 9502

That is too bad, I remember the i-mate Jam quite fondly and I think without it, we probably wouldn't be where we are today

let' hope the media got it wrong!
i dont wanna to force to buy another (HTC) QVGA junk!

Related

WM2005 for E-ten M500, Maybe this could be modified for us?

E-TEN Information Systems today officially announced the Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrade program for its current E-TEN brand M500 Pocket PC Phone Edition.
And you have got to admit that both device bare many simularities. So what im wondering is if we can get a hold of thier rom and mod it, or even place some
preasure on I-mate / HTC to give us a little x-mas present early for being such good custome and devoted Imate jammers. I think this path of getting WM5
is a little more feasable than waiting for some of the other solution posted on this forum.
Donno what do you guys think?
No, for a number of reasons.
1. The hardware is different between the E-TEN M500 and the HTC Magician. From processor to memory configuration to video display to camera, there's just too many variables that would make it futile compared to attempting to make a build from another HTC device, if that is even feasible.
2. The WM5 upgrade for the E-TEN M500 will be available no earlier than December 2005. I am hoping that someone would have provided a hacked WM5 build for the Magician before then.
I think the second solution is first to try. Please give us the link of the source of ur news, and should one of our members who speak english natively start to suggest a letter pushing of CDL (carrer devices company, the owner of imate) to develop a new wm2005 rom for JAM. After getting the email of CDL CEO (I think it is easy and avaialible somewre in the forum) we start all to send that letter. I think CDL should respons, or all of us will forward to Eten company as it respects its customers rather than CDL.
The site where the new was found is:
http://www.etencorp.com/presscenter/press.php?pid=45&tid=0
whats getting to me is that Eten , a crappy novalty Pocket Pc company has an update compiled form Microsoft, why cant Imate get them to do us one. This is the 3rd time this has happen to me, I mean when I got my first pocket pc (F-S Pocket Loox 600) the support team alienated its customers and lost many of us even though it later PPC releases were of better quality. HP has done this too with the 19xx series and 63xx series. But from what iI heard Imate had regular updates and free firmware. Looks like they going to follow the same path.
I think all of the distributors of this device, CDL, QTek, Orange, T-Mobile et-al should be pressed for a WM5 upgrade for the magician. Also we should press HTC who actually manufacture it.
That way the distributors and mobile operators might apply thier own pressure to HTC as well as ours. If HTC are being pressed from both sides then maybe they will do something.
In the meantime we await buzz's unofficial version.
Theres a way of starting an online petition we did it to Fujitsi-siemens for the loox and suprisingly it work. Took some time but they went back on there word. But we need on of Admins here in forum who have a little more pulling power than me. I have been read about Buzz's cracked version but i havent put too much faith in it, I guess just preparing for the worst I guess. Any one want to take the responsiblity for it???
Best way is to vote with your wallets and dont buy HTC products and switch to Eten. That is the only language corporations understand, money. If they see their customer base switching they will MAYBE think twice.
Why don't we just start to hit their boards to release the magneto for us at [email protected] ? Or else someone has a better way to contact a CEO :lol:
Blueangels, Magicians, Alpine can handle the magneto and even the Himalayas, any suggestions are welcomed..
Damn, ETEN is a crapy ppc and they are releasing the Magneto!!
efjay said:
Best way is to vote with your wallets and dont buy HTC products and switch to Eten. That is the only language corporations understand, money. If they see their customer base switching they will MAYBE think twice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the folowing is my history:
Wallabay------> Qtek for one year
Himalaya------> imate (2 different devices as one was stolen) for more than 2 years
Magician-------> Imate Jam Currently for around 6 months
Eten-----------> near future after throwing away CDL products for ever.
I usually don't respect any one does not respect me. CDL is not respecting us, while eten respecting their cutomers, so i think i should switch to eten. From the commercial point of view, i think that it is more benifitial to CDL to release a wm2005 for their old products (not ancient one like wallabay or himallaya) as they will gain the following:
1- they will be respectable from us as this will raise their cutomer support score very much, and will attract new customers as it will be known that the post sale support of CDL is perfect.
2- Their new devices such as JasJar is going will by self pushing power as a new product and will attract the valuable richer customers even old devices such as JAM supports wm2005 or not. In the same time the JAm which is still present in stock with a huge quantitiy start losing attractiveness and its sale curve will decline so much. While there is a large slice of cutomers who cannot afford for JasJar but can afford for JAM but only if supports wm2005 and will go to nokia or sony erricson instead of JasJar, so why not to attract them to Jam by adding wm2005 to it.
3- I am sure that the profit from selling JasJar may be less than Jam as the technology of jasjar is more advanced, so if CDL sells 100 piece of jasjar it will gain for wxample a 10% profit, while if sells 100 piece of Jam it may be 15% profit, especially if we consider that the stock of jam is dead and it is a potential loss and will go to rubbish. So adding wm2005 to jam will revive it and not affecting the sales of jasjar in the same time as it is a new coming product and has its attractiveness.
Finally i hope that CDL, or all HTC affiliated companies rethink regarding this issue and try to continue competeing in this market that of course the winner is the one who respects his customers.
The rumoured xda atom lookslike the magician with WM 2005. Maybe once this device is widely available, someone can hack the ROM.
Greets.
I'm sorry that I'm not with you when you try to boycott HTC.
Eten sold his M500 with the wm5 upgrade clearly advertised. It was a sell point, so, they sold more M500 because ppl were expecting WM5.
HTC did not advertise any of his S1X0 with wm5. If they were to give away wm5, they would advertise at least S110 to be wm5 ready, and it would be a sell point too. They would win money because of the addded value of wm5.
None of us were ripped-off, and, as they keep supporting in a good way our magicians, they are doing their work. They care for us, as they give us rom updates. Not giving us something that is not free, does not turn them bad, or does not mean they don't care about us (well, of course no corp cares for ppl, they care for income! eten does too). Remember, if they give you WM5 for free, they need to support it, and develop some specific things for it. And ppl will keep magician for a longer time, and will not buy theyre new products like the 9100 and so on.
They will in fact loose money. Do you loose money when you work? I surelly don't.
One possible pressure is for us to call our network operators, and start complaining with them. And better, if companys start blaming for not having WM5 for a so much hyped (by operators) product.
Operators themselves are incredibly more powerfull that any of our petition, IMO.
Even that way, I really doubt that we will see WM5 for S100 (it is my opinion, not a rant). Maybe for christmas, with santa giving it to us.
I am looking forward for the new Mitac Mio with gps and wm5. Now thats what I call a all-in-one
I'm waiting for the Mio as well. My only reason for trading the Magician is .... WM5!!
And guess what, my next device after the Mitac Mio would probably be .... another Mitac!!
So yes, HTC will probably lose money in the near future. Keeping your existing customers happy is much easier than getting new ones!
On the other hand, if a WM5 ROM (hacked or not) becomes available before the Mitac launch, I'll stick to the Magician (my preferred option).
rjtd said:
Eten sold his M500 with the wm5 upgrade clearly advertised. It was a sell point, so, they sold more M500 because ppl were expecting WM5.
HTC did not advertise any of his S1X0 with wm5. If they were to give away wm5, they would advertise at least S110 to be wm5 ready, and it would be a sell point too. They would win money because of the addded value of wm5.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great point I agree but Imaging how much more love we would have for our babies is the have a face lift. I mean think of sending you girlfriend to get a new set of boobs. You would play with then all day!!
Anyway lets hope they give us the option if its possible, instead of only making it available as a selling point for there next device which is more probable. Even if we have to pay and ammount say $40 for the upgrade it would be great!!
Cheers all
kta said:
I'm waiting for the Mio as well. My only reason for trading the Magician is .... WM5!!
And guess what, my next device after the Mitac Mio would probably be .... another Mitac!!
So yes, HTC will probably lose money in the near future. Keeping your existing customers happy is much easier than getting new ones!
On the other hand, if a WM5 ROM (hacked or not) becomes available before the Mitac launch, I'll stick to the Magician (my preferred option).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to consider from the money point of view, in either way, you stay with Magician or purchase a new Mio, HTC is not going to make new profit. Then the question arises: why do they need to endeavor to make you stay with Magician?
zenkle said:
Just to consider from the money point of view, in either way, you stay with Magician or purchase a new Mio, HTC is not going to make new profit. Then the question arises: why do they need to endeavor to make you stay with Magician?
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Click to collapse
No Zenkle, i am not agree with u, if i bought MIO, so, i will try a new handset and a new company with a new style and post sale support, so may i found them better and will stick to them and don't use HTC anymore. But if i have an upgraded magician the next step will be JasJar or whatever HTC. Second, if i bought a MIO now, so i will upgrade after 1-3 years from now as i will have a brand new device, but if I ve an upgraded magician , i will upgrade for JasJar after 6 months to 1 year at max.
That's exactly the point. Keeping your customers loyal to the brand is all part of the business.
In addition to this, HTC or the carriers of this brand, will soon get the reputation of not releasing OS upgrades, while others (Samsung, ETEN, etc.) may be getting a more favourable reputation of releasing OS upgrades for their devices. This would sure help the latter increase their sales.
Trust me, if they do not give us WM5.0 is that because they would, in the end, loose money with it.
I bet they have ppl doing all the calculations for them.
Trust me, no calculations were required. They simply said, "we'll make them buy something new" and that was that.
BeyondtheTech said:
Trust me, no calculations were required. They simply said, "we'll make them buy something new" and that was that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And why not say that. Sure, people on this forum may not go back to HTC devices, but there's millions of others that will due to I-mate, O2, Orange and all the others selling these devices. And the profits made from these devices far outweigh the measly profits made from releasing a WM5 rom for the Magician.
My opinion, I want WM5 to play with, and I have no doubt it will eventually come out once someone gets their hands on a decent version (I'm not bringing up the whole other thread to do with buzz and raptorz). But, by the time I feel it's absolutely necessary to upgrade, not just because I want to, there will be some really beefy PDA phones available and my Jam will be obsolete anyway. Hence, a new phone. Maybe an HTC, may not be. Whatever's best for me at the time. And when I do get WM5, I wouldn't mind having official upgrades and support available for it.
Just my 2 cents worth. :lol:
So companies like HP, ETEN, Samsung and others did not do their calculations? Or they don't have new products in the pipeline? All of these companies are releasing an upgrade, and I'm sure they're thinking "customer service" and "returned customers".
Immediate profit vs long term investment in the brand ... look at o2, they're releasing the ATOM, a COPY of the HTC Magician with WM5 in December, I bet HTC will be losing on sales when this comes out. Had the Magician had a WM5 upgrade and being slightly cheaper than the Atom, the Magician would have a longer shelve life thus paying more for its R&D, etc.

HTC aquiring 50% of dopod!

If you havent heard, HTC is in the process of aquiring 50% of DOPOD... all i can say is may God be with the Dopod owners and future Dopod owners because only God know what "tech" support is going to be available for them...
This may seem like a demonic post, but my gf is acting like... she owns the world so i broke up with her and shes trying to make it seem like i caused it.... DAMN PDA's FOR PUSH. damn all instant msg apps. damn ANY MEANS OF COMMUNICATION... (i'm gonna go hole my self in a cave without any electronics.... ok i cant do that, i'll have my wizard with me! hopefully i can find a WIFI network in that cave.)
My guess is that clearly HTC wants to control everything from market to resellers to applications on the device ... Hopefully new players will emerge on the market so that HTC focuses only on device building ... or at least will let us developers build some apps for this devices as they lately slowly lock several APIs... chinese mafia
rain: Well, that's the way it goes! To start from scratch, you gotta ride on bigger companies, then get famous, then eventually fly solo!
And apparently HTC already owns Qtek; can anyone confirm this?
Yes it did ,
if you go to their official web page its in the bottom of it with small letters... Owned by HTC Corp
And when you ask them they say that its their official world wide distributor...
The point is that the politics is similar to the one that MSFT is having but not even MSFT can do it all by their selves, and in my opinion this arrongance is somtimes stupid.
One thing is certain -> HTC will never have a developers web site for support even if its payed (like HP or Motorola has)
As far as I know, Qtek is actually HTC's own brand, so they don't "own" Qtek, they are Qtek.
Yes sorry ,
The Qtek brand its owned by HTC Corp.
My mistake ...
HTC now only needs to extend its market more and more and then be bought by MSFT
It has the biggest carriers, the bigest resellers, now its only supposed to "kill" the regular cell phone market ( Nokia and SonyEricsson)
Looking forward to it...
Dopod was owned by Cher Wang (the Chairwoman of HTC) anyway. So I would think that there will be little change.
rain said:
now its only supposed to "kill" the regular cell phone market ( Nokia and SonyEricsson)
Looking forward to it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You wouldn't want HTC to totally kill the other competitors - we need competition, otherwise things will get boring.
kevino said:
Dopod was owned by Cher Wang (the Chairwoman of HTC) anyway. So I would think that there will be little change.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Obligatory "lol, wang" post.
Also: Does this mean much of anything?
Will HTC stop selling device through its lesser-known Qtek channel, and focus entirely on DoPod?
Will devices be quicker to market?
Will the dopod unbranded firmware be made more freely available?
I doubt anybody can really answer those questions yet, but I totally felt like asking them anyway~
bobgorila said:
Will HTC stop selling device through its lesser-known Qtek channel, and focus entirely on DoPod?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow wow wow... easy there.
Dopod: South East Asia and Australasia
Qtek: Europe
Hope that'll answer your question.
Richard,
I wonder if i-mate could be next? for the US market and south african?
And for there club also ... i saw that q-tek is also raising one on their web site... How beautifull is life when the money are not a problem
fone_fanatic said:
If you havent heard, HTC is in the process of aquiring 50% of DOPOD...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Today's news: http://msmobiles.com/news.php/5254.html
It's actually more than 50%! (don't be surprised: the chairwoman of HTC already OWNS Dopod, anyway)
rain: msmobiles.com interviewed the CEO of i-mate at 3GSM 2006 (he claims to be THE designer of THE xda!):
http://msmobiles.com/news.php/4919.html
Note this: " i-mate is pondering using other manufacturers than HTC but these other manufacturers cannot be revealed until these phones will be launched"
Now THIS would be interesting!
bobgorila: i-mate operates in Dubai (base), UK, Italy, Armenia, Australia, the USA and South Africa.
I would surely want to see some real tough competition.

Kaiser availability/release date?

I'm new to the whole Windows Mobile world, and I was about to make my first pocket pc phone with the TyTN, but from the news I'm reading it seems the phone replacing it will be out soon. I've decided to wait it out for the Kaiser, at least that way I won't have to go through the problem or risks involved with flashing a WM6 ROM to it, and I would have GPS built in.
I was wondering if anyone heard or know of the firm release date of the unit and the street price? Any help on this is greatly appreciated, thanks
I heard release may be around late june & price for sim free is expected to be around £400.
Looks like a nice device but not sure how keen I would be on having WM6 this early in its release, If you go with a WM5 OS all your problems are already writen & resolved within forum threads, as a first step into the PPC world you may have a better experience with WM5.
Regards, Mister B
I've heard of a late Q3 or early Q4, 2007 release to Cingular for them to carry the Kaiser, but haven't heard anything about price yet.
As far as the newly released WM6, several apps I'm already using on my Wizard have already been upgraded to be compatible with WM6 -- which I'm also currently running on my phone.
But -- again -- it's M$ Windoze we're dealing with here, so anything can happen. . .
I appreciate the replies and the advice guys. I don't mind waiting till June, but Q4 might be too long to wait. I guess I could reconsider getting a TyTN, I just hate having to spend money on a whole new phone in six months time when the Kaiser comes out. Even if the TyTN works and serves its purpose, I'm gonna have a want for the Kaiser, and if I would have just waited it would have just been a one time expense. Oh well, it's an issue that I have to deal with. Thanks again guys.

I mate ultimate 9502

I am going to be getting this phone with in the month and i noticed that there is no section for it. please can we make a section for it?
I heard rumors that it shares some parts with the htc tilt did i hear correctly?
Take my advice and buy one of the HTC devices because of the very bad support of the imate
We realy suffer with this company
You can visit the forum.imate.com to see the complains of the imate 9502 owner before take your descision
i would have already bought the touchpro but there is no softbuttons. i do not know if i can live without them. i have a wing now.
do you have a suggestion for another phone it has to have gps vga qwerty keyboard and 128ram
i was thinking about the toshiba g910 but it is just ugly. I also thought about the symbol/motorola mc35

[Q] Non-Touchscreen Smartphone

It finally happened - my HTC S740 was stolen a couple of days ago and I now have to decide what to do next: get a used one on eBay or find a worthy successor.
Is there a consensus what such a successor would look like? I remember a phrase by one of the wise men of this forum to the extent that "screens are not in the world to be touched" a view which I subscribe to wholeheartedly. So the new machine would have to be a non-touchscreen as well as have a retractable keyboard, just as the S740 does.
Much appreciate your ideas on this one!
Anybody? Or do I have to assume there are no machines like the S740 anymore

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