1. Description
What and why OSV vendors should do to keep OEMs
and their customers satisfied for a long period? How to
develop a new product which will become trendsetter?
Balanced products with polished hardware and
optimized software well fit together are still a rare sensation
on the market. There are a few companies who managed
to get them on a regular basis and most of them are
proprietary vendors possessing and controlling both
hardware and software development.
This presentation will provide an overview of mission
critical elements required to successfully cooperate with
computer OEM companies in order to develop a “Dream
product”.

2. How to Develop a Dream Product:
OEM and FOSS OSV Synergy.
Dmitry Komissarov
ROSA CEO and co-founder
LinuxCon Europe, November 2012

3. What is a Dream Product?
It might be unique…
The first satellite had been sent to space on October 4th,1957

4. What is a Dream Product?
It might be mass production…

5. What is a Dream Product?
It might be mass production…
70 000 000 pcs had been manufactured over the last 60 years

6. What is a Dream Product?
It might be adored or hated…
“…There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any
significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized
item…” Steve Balmer, CEO Microsoft

7. What is a Dream Product?
But anyway Dream Products lead to
• Economy/Technology/Lifestyle BREAKTHROUGH!
• Deeper level of comfort/satisfaction/effectiveness.
• Fast growing ADDICTED customer/fan base.
• Lot of fun and aspiration for developers.
• (Might be …) profit .

8. Current Environment
• Fast pacing electronics development requires ASAP
Time to Market.
• High RnD budget luxury is concentrated in the largest
multinational companies (MS, Google, Apple). This
results in a limited software platform choice and thus
little chances to differentiate.
• Economics issues cause slow market growth.
• Evaporating margins for hardware vendors.

9. Consequences…
Lenovo Nokia
HP
Sharp
Samsung DELL
ZTE
Sony
n
Apple $600+ B

10. Common OEM/OSV Issues
OSV
OEM
Market
Who's guilty here and who is right Expectations
Is not for us to say.
But anyway the cart's still there today.

11. Common OEM/OSV Issues
Hardware vendor: “I do not care much about software. It
should just work perfectly on my new shiny device. By the
way …. you got 2 months to develop custom OS for me.”
Software vendor: “Why do they use this crappy components
with no appropriate drivers? Why that system is not
designed for my software?”
Developers: “We want fun. Documentation and QA are
boring.”
Design: “Frankenstein”.
Security: Weak and last minute hardware and software
integration leaves holes for intrusion.
Result: Complaining consumer will try his fortune with
another device “designed in California”.

12. Linux specific OSV/OEMs issues
• Linux is free… at least very cheap
• Device drivers… Who cares?
• “Why it does not look like Windows, (Mac)?”
• We’ve heard about KDE. We want it on this 6’’ touch
screen.

13. How Dream Products Evolve?
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-
nine percent perspiration.”
Thomas A. Edison

14. Product Life Cycle

15. Concept Creation
• Shared vision
• Joint research process
and ideas pool
• Commitment to
collaborate
• Trust

16. Concept Development
• Joint and mixed
design/engineering/marketing
teams
• Diffusion of hardware and
software technologies to
achieve balance and synergy

17. Market Development
• Common business incentives
• Joint marketing
• Seamless services integration

18. Market Development
• Common interests
• Clear communication
• Highly coordinated execution

19. A Dream Product.
How To Make It Happen?
• Early engagement in new product concept
development. Make sure OEM and OSV
shares a common vision and goals.
• Trusted relations. Clear communications.
• Executive buy-ins and sponsorship from both
sides.
• Joint (SW+HW) Design, Engineering, Sales
and Marketing teams.
• Open standards compliance.

20. Financial aspect
Common practice today is:
$$$ Total OEM2OSV =
NRE + Per unit fee * Number of Units sold.
…but
High Non Return Engineering (NRE) payment
distracts OSV from business success.
Shared risk (higher Per unit fee, less NRE)
motivates for better performance.

21. True Collaboration Example

22. Open Design Initiative
Open Hardware: Open specifications,
Early planning stage access
+
Open Source Software
+
Open and Common Standards
Better Products and Happier
=
Customers!

23. Summary
• Dream Product development requires high
OEM and OSV integration from the earliest
stage of products development.
• Common and open standards foster better and
easier collaboration.
• In order to achieve higher effectiveness, we
need to embrace OSS principles to whole
product development.
• Open Design Initiative might serve OEMs and
OSVs to create Dream Products.

24. Thank you!
Questions?
Dmitry Komissarov
kd@rosalab.ru