Order #4025

[DieterParticipant]

Hi Flomies:

I have pre-ordered more than a year ago and I have been following all your updates as much as possible.

I have also been reading the forum discussions and I think it is at least a consumer’s right to know what happened to (pre-) orders, because these are not kickstarter risk orders. No matter if we believe in the technology or not…..(and believe me, most of us ordered because we do and you are doing your best to destroy our belief).

I did originally order a FloJack and I did take the chance to switch to a FloBLE when it was given.

Just please be honest with us: is there any chance we are going to receive the device one day?

Best regards,
Dieter

[RichardKeymaster]

Hey Dieter, the first hard fact to understand is that Flomio is practically insolvent. The Kickstarter and pre-order funds were allocated in full to the development, support, fulfillment, and manufacturing of 1000 FloJacks. Some of the FloJacks were shipped to customers, some were held because of the iOS7 issue, and a small few were defective and need repair. The FloBLE design and development has been largely sponsored by Badanamu and partly by Flomio. Once the iOS SDK is complete, Badanumu pledge to place a large enough order to generate sufficient cash flow for Flomio to order 1000 FloBLEs from the same factory. These are the units we planned to ship to those that switched their order from FloJack.

Do I think there’s a chance that we can get the SDK done? Definitely. Do I think we can get it done, manufacture the FloBLEs in scale, and ship out the Kickstarter and pre-order inventory before the iPhone6 is released? I’m not sure, but it looks tough. Do I think the FloBLE will still be relevant in the face of an iPhone6 that supports NFC? Most likely. Why? For several reasons. Firstly, because of all the legacy devices. Secondly, there are features of the NFC spec that even Android hasn’t been able to expose properly while keeping battery consumption down. The FloJack and FloBLE sniffer design is an innovative approach that’s hard to replicate. Finally, instrumented space installations will fall short of customer expectations as they have on Android. That’s what we’ve learned from the success of the NFC Patch Kit. So we expect the FloBLE will be realized and manufactured, but like all things nothing is for certain given the scarcity of investment in NFC overall.

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