>"That's 20k potential sales of a phone that doesn't exist, using an OS that's still in development, to a tiny subset of individuals willing to engage in crowd sourcing."
I think it's pretty clear what the parent means to say there. That demonstrating that much demand after accounting for multiple, large limiting factors could extrapolate to much larger numbers with those factors removed.
Cards Against Humanity collected $15.5K from 750 people via Kickstarter and went on to make an estimated $12M with wide availability [0].
The card makers of the world likely would have laughed at a game with 750 sales, but today I'm sure they'd all love to hold down the top 4 best-seller spots on Amazon [1].
Yes, phones and card games aren't a direct comparison, but the parent had a good point and focusing on one number is awfully myopic.
