Meizu turns to crowdfunding to get its Gravity wireless speaker off the ground

[Shawn Knight]

Meizu, one of the largest consumer electronic brands in China, is plotting its US debut. Rather than bring one of its successful smartphones like the Meizu Pro 6 to American soil, the company hopes to introduce itself with a wireless speaker.

Designed by Kosho Tsuboi, the Meizu Gravity sits atop an off-centered transparent block of acrylic that give the illusion that the speaker is floating. On the top is an acrylic prism that serves as the speaker’s display.

Meizu said its engineers worked with Swiss-based acoustic experts Dirac to come up with the ideal sound for the speaker. It features two 1.25-inch drivers that operate at 70Hz – 20Khz to provide what Meizu calls a full-range listening experience.

Measuring 262mm x 58mm x 47mm, the speaker isn’t all that large. It’s powered by an Allwinner R16 quad-core Cortex-A7 processor, an AXP223 PMU and 512MB of RAM alongside 4GB of eMMC memory. It runs Android 4.4.2 and features 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth for connectivity. There’s also an auxiliary input for wired connectivity and a USB 2.0 port should you want to go that route.

Meizu hopes to raise $100,000 to help the Gravity get off the ground (no pun intended). The company has already raised more than $8,000 with a month remaining in the campaign. The campaign is of the flexible nature meaning Meizu will receive the funds even if its goal isn’t met. Nevertheless, a pledge of $169 (plus shipping) will guarantee you’ll be among the first to receive the wireless speaker when it ships in December.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/64841-meizu-turns-crowdfunding-get-gravity-wireless-speaker-off.html

 

[Raoul Duke]

That looks very impressive, especially the display, but if Meizu is one of the largest consumer electronic brands in China, why does this need to be crowdfunded?

 

[cliffordcooley]

Crowd funding from a known brand could actually be a project I might support. Although with them being a known brand I might question the need to turn to crowd funding.

 

[oldikes]

Why do you say no pun intended when you clearly intend the pun...?

To me this product looks cheap, like something no-name you'd find in a bed bath and beyond or on eBay.

 

[damnthereaper]

That looks very impressive, especially the display, but if Meizu is one of the largest consumer electronic brands in China, why does this need to be crowdfunded?

^This. You would think one of the largest tech companies in China could find 100,000 from either it's own pockets or investors for this. They posted revenue for 451 million in 2013. And had almost 600 million invested in them by another Chinese company last year.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

They want a 100K in very short time but have only managed to raise 8K so far. Man! Gravity's a b***h, it always lets you down.

 

[oldikes]

I would say the Kickstarter is more a way of measuring interest than obtaining funds

 

[deemon]

I would say the Kickstarter is more a way of measuring interest than obtaining funds

why not both?

 

[Puiu]

Crowd funding from a known brand could actually be a project I might support. Although with them being a known brand I might question the need to turn to crowd funding.

Advertising that gives you money instead paying for it? Measure interest in the product to convince more investors? there are many reasons why a big company might use crowdfunding.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Advertising that gives you money instead paying for it? Measure interest in the product to convince more investors? there are many reasons why a big company might use crowdfunding.

The main one would be they were turned down for a loan or they're not committed enough to pay it back to begin with.

 

[Puiu]

The main one would be they were turned down for a loan or they're not committed enough to pay it back to begin with.

It could very well be that. Even if a company has millions in assets and revenue, it almost never translates into enough future investment money (at least not enough to cover every project they have)