Hi Charlie
Thanks for being the first to ask a question. It’s a good one, in that to answer it properly will require quite a bit of insight into how we’ve come about and how decisions are made. Forgive me if I indulge myself with my first answer as it might help answer several more later.
The short answer is simply…
Price.
To retail a Cortex A8 chipset product like the new Scroll Excel -
http://www.storageoptions.com/products/ ... roll-excel - a year ago roughly when the original Scroll came out, would have meant a retail price well over £200 maybe even £300. For all sorts of reasons, that’s not a step we would have taken at that time – indeed a year on a £200+ price point is a barrier that would still frighten us…
Also, a year ago, the Scroll was arguably the best product of its type on the market, at the entry-level (i.e. c. £150 or less). We were pitching to buyers who’d seen 50 other products, as the market desperately tried to get something iPad-like out for Christmas (at a more affordable price) and none (believe it or not) were coming close to the features we were demonstrating. We were probably about 2-3 months ahead of everyone else and could hit a very attractive price of about £150.
Commercially-speaking, for us (a very new brand, without a massive marketing budget) the right decision was to go with the ARM11 product. High-street buyers were making commitments, the product was good and it was a risk we could afford to take.
A year on and the drop in price of more sophisticated technology is quite astonishing. To be honest none of us thought we would have a product as good as our new Excel, priced at £129 quite so soon.
Hope that helps.