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The oligopoly juiced prices for flagships and is shocked it affected demand. People have substitutes. Even if you want a niche feature like Google Fi support,

The oligopoly juiced prices for flagships and is shocked it affected demand. People have substitutes. Even if you want a niche feature like Google Fi support, you have to dig a bit but the Moto Android one entries are fine. Internal memory is tight though. Expandable memory can't support apps or the OS, where sizes are growing... Seems trivial to give these all 256 or 512 gb but they are stubbornly kneecapped on space and hard to expand. Maybe space is how manufacturers are fighting back. We know with the battery scandals they aren't averse to "justifiable" planned obscelesce. When do we get a dozen low cost Shenzhen competitors to diversify the market?

Tsubasachan 8y ago
If you have an unlimited no throttling data plan you can just put everything in the cloud.
- franciscop 8y ago
  I plan to upgrade my phone (unless it breaks first) when I can get either 1TB or unlimited data :) I realize it might take 3-5 years, but that's okay.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  Almost nobody has these though...
- asdff 8y ago
  That's certainly not ideal. My connection gets dropped all the time just walking around, not to mention going into a building, and carriers aren't incentivized to upgrade their infrastructure to make it more reliable.
- brownbat 8y ago
  I have nearly that and put all media I can in the cloud, but it's still complaining about space because I have apps installed, a feature the phone apparently wasn't designed for. Being able to stream an app would be nice. Wait a second... we have those, they are called websites. Maybe apps themselves are the problem.
jdietrich 8y ago
>Seems trivial to give these all 256 or 512 gb but they are stubbornly kneecapped on space and hard to expand. Fast, durable storage is a lot more expensive than an SD card with dismal random performance a few thousand cycles of endurance. The big-name manufacturers do use storage as a segmentation feature, but many new manufacturers are happy to offer you reasonably-priced storage and microSD expansion. >When do we get a dozen low cost Shenzhen competitors to diversify the market? We've already got them - Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Elephone, Ulefone, UMIDIGI, Cubot, Oukitel, Blackview and a whole bunch of others. Only the first three are likely to be competitive on the western market, but Xiaomi are already taking big bites of market share in many European markets. They'll sell you a perfectly serviceable mid-ranger for $150 and a flagship killer for $300.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Huawei? I've been very skeptical as to whether recent negative press is motivated [in part] by protectionism. They seem to have taken a lot of telecoms market share (in the UK at least).
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    I wouldn't really class Huawei in the same group. They do sell a number of reasonably-priced midrange phones, but they're a multinational telecoms behemoth with a very peculiar ownership structure. IMO they're the Chinese Samsung rather than a genuinely disruptive player.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The oligopoly juiced prices for flagships and is shocked it affected demand. > The oligopoly juiced prices for flagships and is shocked it affected demand. It didn't affect demand, it affected market clearing quantity because demand was not (assuming, arguendo, the description of surprise is correct) what the makers involved in the “juicing” of prices thought it would be. OTOH, if there are effectively competing alternatives to those offered by the “oligopoly”, then it is not an oligopoly.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

If you have an unlimited no throttling data plan you can just put everything in the cloud.

franciscop 8y ago
I plan to upgrade my phone (unless it breaks first) when I can get either 1TB or unlimited data :) I realize it might take 3-5 years, but that's okay.
nicoburns 8y ago
Almost nobody has these though...
asdff 8y ago
That's certainly not ideal. My connection gets dropped all the time just walking around, not to mention going into a building, and carriers aren't incentivized to upgrade their infrastructure to make it more reliable.
brownbat 8y ago
I have nearly that and put all media I can in the cloud, but it's still complaining about space because I have apps installed, a feature the phone apparently wasn't designed for. Being able to stream an app would be nice. Wait a second... we have those, they are called websites. Maybe apps themselves are the problem.

jdietrich 8y ago

>Seems trivial to give these all 256 or 512 gb but they are stubbornly kneecapped on space and hard to expand. Fast, durable storage is a lot more expensive than an SD card with dismal random performance a few thousand cycles of endurance. The big-name manufacturers do use storage as a segmentation feature, but many new manufacturers are happy to offer you reasonably-priced storage and microSD expansion. >When do we get a dozen low cost Shenzhen competitors to diversify the market? We've already got them - Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Elephone, Ulefone, UMIDIGI, Cubot, Oukitel, Blackview and a whole bunch of others. Only the first three are likely to be competitive on the western market, but Xiaomi are already taking big bites of market share in many European markets. They'll sell you a perfectly serviceable mid-ranger for $150 and a flagship killer for $300.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Huawei? I've been very skeptical as to whether recent negative press is motivated [in part] by protectionism. They seem to have taken a lot of telecoms market share (in the UK at least).
- jdietrich 8y ago
  I wouldn't really class Huawei in the same group. They do sell a number of reasonably-priced midrange phones, but they're a multinational telecoms behemoth with a very peculiar ownership structure. IMO they're the Chinese Samsung rather than a genuinely disruptive player.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> The oligopoly juiced prices for flagships and is shocked it affected demand. > The oligopoly juiced prices for flagships and is shocked it affected demand. It didn't affect demand, it affected market clearing quantity because demand was not (assuming, arguendo, the description of surprise is correct) what the makers involved in the “juicing” of prices thought it would be. OTOH, if there are effectively competing alternatives to those offered by the “oligopoly”, then it is not an oligopoly.