In a forum post on his personal fan worship portal H4Vuser.net yesterday, RED founder and CEO Jim Jannard all but declared the company's first smartphone, the RED Hydrogen One, a failure. Well, it wasn't that RED failed (of course not!), it was that someone else failed RED. Specifically, its ODM (original design manufacturer).

Without getting too mucked up in smartphone business jargon, an ODM is basically a full-service design and firmware support company. While the specific services they provide depend on the client and product, in general, an ODM takes a conceptual product design, basic specifications, and a price point from a customer, and then creates a working smartphone which can then be mass-produced by an OEM (original equipment manufacturer).