Solana’s Saga smartphone gross sales dramatically underperform regardless of constructive critiques

Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko responded to underwhelming gross sales of his agency’s smartphone in an interview with Unchained Crypto on Dec 5.

The agency unveiled its Android smartphone, Saga, in June 2022 and launched the device in 2023. The corporate aimed to supply customers with a tool tailor-made to web3. Particularly, it promised an app retailer separate from Google and Apple’s app shops with a view to bypass these corporations’ restrictive cryptocurrency insurance policies.

Within the interview, host Laura Shin highlighted Saga’s “underwhelming” gross sales, noting that solely 2,500 telephones have been bought.

Regardless of the low gross sales, Yakovenko described constructive suggestions, stating:

“We labored with a a 3rd occasion, proper … [it was] superior to construct this system, and it’s I believe a very, actually good system. We obtained actually good critiques from the those that obtained it. The Solana tremendous followers, they cherished it.”

Yakovenko added that Solana believed it wanted to achieve 25,000 to 50,000 gross sales earlier than different builders would possibly really feel compelled to ship purposes.

Future unclear

On whether or not Solana will proceed to push ahead with cellular units, Yakovenko implied that there’s much less want for such merchandise. He famous that, since mid-2022, progressive net apps have decreased the necessity for devoted units and apps.

Concerning future Solana units, he mentioned:

“… We’d have to essentially give it some thought and resolve [whether there is] a spot for nearly like a wise pockets, a less expensive model that any person who’s an iPhone person would use as a secondary system … however we haven’t seen a ton of sign [as to] whether or not that’s a compelling sufficient sort of factor to to promote 50,000 items of.”

Shin additionally commented on an alleged vulnerability in Saga reported by the safety agency CertiK in November. Yakovenko denied that there was any vulnerability, explaining that the safety agency rooted the telephone and displayed a Bitcoin pockets that had been hacked. He implied this discovering was partly irrelevant as a result of the Solana stack “doesn’t assist Bitcoin.”