Coship W10M phone crowdfunding fails - miserably and unsurprisingly

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Last month, budget handset purveyor Coship launched a crowdfunding campaign for its new Windows 10 Mobile handset (just termed the 'Moly Windows Phone', confusingly). That campaign has now ended - and it hasn't exactly been a roaring success, reports NeoWin.

From the NeoWin piece:

 

Today, the Indiegogo campaign for its new phone has closed. Three weeks after it began, the campaign reached less than 3% of its goal ($2,569 out of $100,000), with just 30 backers around the world. Given that the minimum cost for the handset was $179, it's clear that fewer than half of these backers actually wanted to buy the phone itself, instead choosing the $4 'WP digital booklet' or $5 '50% off Moly X1 phone case' options.

The reasons for the failure of the campaign to come anywhere close to reaching its goal are debatable, but there are many to choose from. For a start, Coship's "new" phone wasn't really new at all, but a lightly refreshed version of its Moly X1, which it launched earlier this year, after previously unveiling it in early 2015. Potential buyers may have been disinclined to back an older device, albeit with minor improvements.

All of which isn't at all surprising. In order to succeed on Kickstarter or Indiegogo you've got to offer something new or different. A Snapdragon 410-powered, generic touch slab with precisely zero unique selling points won't have been grabbing anybody's interest in late 2016. Heck, this wouldn't have succeeded in late 2015, perhaps not even two years ago.

Now a mainstream brand can sometimes get away with releasing a less-than-stellar handset in terms of specifications, selling it through High Street shops and the power of marketing. But Coship is an unknown brand in most of the world and this campaign wouldn't have grabbed any attention or headlines... anywhere.

Now consider if Coship had put something genuinely new(ish) into the mix - a fast fingerprint scanner, a huge battery, waterproofing and at least a Snapdragon 617, for example. Then we'd have been in with a chance. But this was dead from the moment the campaign launched. Sorry, Coship.

The promo video for the campaign (which has now closed) is still online on YouTube and is embedded below for interest:

Source / Credit: Neowin