Even "manufacturing" is vaguely defined - anything between obtaining the raw materials and sending the product to the customer is part of that. After all, no one gets complaints for using an off-the-shelf IC instead of mining their own silicon...
The term for (electronics product) manufacturing is quite well defined and accepted in the industry. It is getting the board etc assembled etc to your design and specifications. Generally that would also involve designing the circuit, laying out the PCB's, doing the BOM, case etc.
Of course all of these individual things can be subcontracted out, but for a company to say they have "manufactured" something, then they have to have had tangible design input into the product, and have personal hand in at least some parts of the manufacturing process.
Orsto "manufacture" nothing, they are lying. They (just he it seems) have bee doing this for years, over and over again.
Exactly, Dave.
I forgot how pedantic engineers try to be. Of course I realize that many of the large laptop brands aren't pick-n-placing their own PCB's and that companies like Foxconn let you choose the processor, mass storage, optical and screen you want, then slap on a bezel customized with your logo... but that is not what I am talking about. It is quite rare that company A takes a product from company B in it's entirety and just slaps their own sticker on it. It's the difference between a fully bespoke suit and getting something off the rack adjusted to fit. But both of those are again very different than if Oxxford was sending someone over to the Ralph Lauren outlet store, and sewing Oxxford labels over the Lauren ones.
The pictures that were on the KS page are just the vanilla product as it comes from Zeaplus, as was the OS/software. The project never made it clear that what was being offered was essentially a customized skin onto an existing product. They claimed the skin was the hardware and software - but curiously, the hardware (the watch case) looked *identical* to the one right from Zeaplus, except with some slight embellishment (a groove around the case or something). As someone who does his own CNC machining in-house, it would be asinine to get a custom case cut that looked identical to the OEM case, except with an extra groove. At best, you would use OEM cases and cut that feature into them. So it's OEM case, OEM electronics - meaning only the software is different. Except those differences weren't explained other than the "close relationship with Mentor Graphics" - but the software shown in the video was the same stuff that comes with the watch.
I wonder how well aware Mentor Graphics legal and product development teams are that they are working closely with Orsto? I'm guessing it's more likely someone knows someone who used to work there (or still does) that said they'd help them with something or other. I'll wager there is zero official and documented relationship there.
Which means all that's *really* being offered is the promise to do "something" with the software - and for that you get to drastically overpay for an off-the-shelf watch. Not exactly compelling.
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