Canadian newcomer aims to disrupt smartphone market
OTTAWA – This might be considered the unofficial mantra for Frank Technologies, the brash upstart that kicks off a crowd source funding campaign today (Tuesday) to secure upwards of $250,000, money it needs to begin mass production of a new smartphone, dubbed Frank.
The Ottawa-based company, which likes to drop the f-bomb in its marketing collateral and uses other colourful language to describe its quest to disrupt the smartphone market, has developed a mid-range smartphone that it plans to sell for $180. Fahd Alhattab, chief executive at Frank Technologies, tells Cartt.ca in an interview that the company can keep its costs low and make money because it has eliminated the middleman.
Frank is going to use a pure e-commerce model and go directly to consumers, so it won’t have to carry the costs associated with a retail model nor will its device have to include costs added on by the carriers when they sell devices in retail locations.
He adds that smartphones with similar specs (see image below) retail for nearly twice as much.
“It’s directly from manufacturer to us and then to the consumer and so that allows us to build a high spec phone at a low price. That’s why you see phones at our spec rate closer to $300, because they need to keep their margins,” he says.
Frank is working with a manufacturer in China to make the devices and Alhattab adds it has been a positive experience testing and vetting various models of devices with a variety of specifications. For example, Frank initially settled on a smartphone that ran on Android 6.0 and had a 5 Megapixel front camera and 13 Megapixel back camera. Feedback from early testing led the company to upgrade the device to its current configuration.
The company is looking to capitalize on an increasing demand for mid-range devices not only in Canada but more broadly in North America. Alhattab says the device will operate on the majority of the carriers networks in Canada and the United States. Focusing on North America also dovetails well with Frank’s crowd source funding strategy.
Since most of the funds from crowd sourced campaigns come from North America and Europe, it makes sense to attempt to capture a share of the market on this side of the Atlantic, particularly in the first couple of years. Longer term though this is about bringing new devices to the North American market.
“For now I think what we’re betting on is the long tail effect of the phone market. If you look at the eastern part of the world you have so many different types of phones that you and I have never heard of and brands that we’ve never heard of. And the reason there’s more being produced out there is their accessibility to manufacturing. So I kind of see this as the democratization of technology where two young guys, with the right attitude, the right moves and the right learnings from (others), can manufacture a smartphone and bring it to a different market,” says Alhattab.
Since Frank began its social media campaign to attract people to its crowd source funding initiative, reaction to the device has been generally positive. Alhattab acknowledges that some people will think the device is “crap” and won’t succeed but more often than not there are individuals who have become brand ambassadors advocating for the smartphone.
“The reactions we’re getting we find are great and we’re loving it. And to be honest, we’re two young guys (chief technology officer Mo Omer is 17 years old) and with the team that we built, this has been a hell of journey just to get to this point with launch day on Tuesday, and then when launch day happens we’ll see how the first two weeks go,” he says.
While Frank hopes to attract upwards of $250,000 with its campaign – which will be hosted on Indiegogo – riding the momentum within the first few days will be critical.
“We feel confident that we can hit 30% of our goal within the first three days. The campaign will run for about 40 days but within those first two weeks you really want to be able to hit the majority of your goal and then use the last couple of weeks to go above and beyond your goal,” added Alhattab.
For more, go to www.frankisaphone.com
