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 gadget 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 so as 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 offered.
Regardless of the low gross sales, Yakovenko described constructive suggestions, stating:
“We labored with a a 3rd get together, proper … [it was] superior to construct this gadget, and it’s I believe a very, actually good gadget. We received actually good opinions from the those who received it. The Solana tremendous followers, they beloved 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 internet apps have lowered the necessity for devoted units and apps.
Relating to future Solana units, he stated:
“… We’d have to essentially give it some thought and resolve [whether there is] a spot for nearly like a sensible pockets, a less expensive model that any person who’s an iPhone person would use as a secondary gadget … however we haven’t seen a ton of sign [as to] whether or not that’s a compelling sufficient type of factor to to promote 50,000 models 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 cellphone 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 help Bitcoin.”
