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Comment by anshumankmr | Hacker News Reader

There was a video on YouTube I watched years ago about how enthusiast brands will always betray its core user base. It was talking about One Plus and Essential. But I believe it applies to businesses in general. How will a company like this become mainstream? I hope something like this succeeds in the long-term but the way I see it most people don't want the hassle of worrying about how to repair their laptop or phone. This also stifles any major efforts taken towards the right to repair.

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It's a rather common pattern in politics, that the people who you need in order to rise are not the same who you need in order to stay.

But yours is just a negative attitude. Framework could or could not betray its base, they could or could not fail and they could or could not be followed by other manufacturers.

In the meantime enjoy, if you want a fully serviceable laptop you have at least one option

Welll, technically, in my country, India, the right to repair sort of already exists. I have gotten my devices repaired by third party vendors many times if my device was not under warranty.

Is that the right question? Does a company have to become mainstream?

Okay. But if it wants to continue to serve it existing customer base, it will need to make money. It will need to incentivize people to work for it which will need a lot of money too. Plus it will need to keep up with R&D needed to make laptops (though nowadays laptops are not jumping forward in terms of technology except for increase in processing power and storage). People in other countries may also want to buy it, so to expand to other countries need money. Then there are factors like customer service,considering the fact most people wouldn’t know how to repair their devices. They would need to offer their own repair centers and call centers. This would be a significant investment too.

Another way to make money without having to detray customers is to... Ask for money. One Plus positioned itself as a cheap flagship killer by having paper thin margins and no marketing, and the moves to just make expensive phones like anyone else. Framework is not cheap and you get what you pay for.

Essential tried the same thing by trying to be a new flagship phone in an already overcrowded market place of Android phones.

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