Learn from others' mistakes.

1. Using existing hardware rather than designing new hardware.
2. Focusing the software effort below the user levels.
3. Targeting the linux developer community.

How interesting. OM is too diverse so it's hard to get everything right. This time they try to start small and focus on just a few things, namely don't do hardware and only try to open up the existing phones. That means they want to create yet another iphone/android, because with a proper SDK people can do exactly the same thing, only with a different level of openness. This little bit of openness does matter to free software enthusiasts, so this is a niche market. However, any company that are willing to open up their Android source code (maybe not the GSM part) can actually provide the same level of openness, and I believe this is going to happen soon.

I think the idea itself is nice. There definitely is a small niche market there because OM has proved it, but I think the root issue is the people, not the strategy. The real problem is not about the idea, it's about the execution. Execution is not just 'do as you were told', it's also about knowing the priorities, evaluating the reality and giving proper feedbacks to your superior. Now I see the same person who failed to materialize OM's idea is running the new company on exactly the same topic. For me, that concluded the future of this new startup. Let's see if I'm right on this. Time will tell.