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> Whereas most of the world's electronics are partly or totally manufactured in Asia, it's mostly by or for American- or European-owned companies. Do you have

> Whereas most of the world's electronics are partly or totally manufactured in Asia, it's mostly by or for American- or European-owned companies. Do you have a source for this claim? I suspect it's incorrect, especially once you stop focusing quite so strongly on CPUs and programming languages and start considering everything that goes into a computer or mobile device such as RAM and networking, not to mention displays, which are just as important as the CPU. > It is just that little of it seems to directly influence the world market elsewhere. In the country where you live, maybe. Aren't the Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Korean, and so on, markets part of the world market? Maybe I have a different perspective on things since I live in Vietnam. But your article comes across as kind of myopic to me.

lproven 6y ago
By all means please do educate me on what I am not seeing. I once saw a British OS, Symbian, used around the world. I saw a Finnish company's phones used around the world. A little British computer maker designed what's still the most popular CPU architecture, ARM, but the company is long dead. I understand many of the world's hard disks come from Thailand and Malaysia -- but from factories owned and run by Western Digital, Seagate, etc. Yes, every country is part of the world market, but the salient point is who manages to break out of their own national market. I am trying to think of Asian companies who make and sell computers or computer-related tech internationally. Samsung, Toshiba, Hitachi... But they run American OSes and use American designs. Sony and Nintendo don't, but then they don't make CPUs or GPUs, do they? Sony's PCs run Windows, like the Japanese laptop vendors' do. When Sony made PDAs, they ran PalmOS; when Sanyo did, they ran Windows CE. American dominance was not so universal just 25y ago. Can we identify what happened? Is this all "worse is better"?
- esperent 6y ago
  > I understand many of the world's hard disks come from Thailand and Malaysia -- but from factories owned and run by Western Digital, Seagate, etc. And the largest manufacturer of screens, ram, and SSDs is Samsung. When it comes to smartphones, again, Samsung is top, then Huawei, and Apple is third. Laptops? It's Lenovo, a Hong Kong company. HP is second. Game consoles? Sony and Nintendo are top there, MS is third. (Edit: and CPUs, top is Arm, Japanese.) Saying these companies don't impact the world market is just plain wrong.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ExThermoGuy 6y ago
    I think his point is that they're all clones, or running American OS, or selling excellent quality commodities (in the sense that as a designer or engineer I don't care much about the part past its specs) Lenovo -> IBM Samsung + Huawei -> Google SSD, screens, ram -> commodity You might balk at SSDs being mere commodities (or screens for that matter). Surely Samsung SSDs and screens are better! Sure, and as a designer I might care. But I probably wouldn't, past the promised MTBF, viewing angle and contrast ratio. Put the SSD+display+CPU together and you get, for better or worse[1] , a largely American computing device. You don't get a BBC micro or an Acorn. Or a Setun. Nintendo is the only one who obviously stands out as different, making a unique computing device (albeit with an American CPU). Although even the N64 was largely an American design (SGI) [1] I think worse, in the sense that everything is a Unix monoculture.
    - esperent 6y ago
      > You might balk at SSDs being mere commodities Why would I balk at that? SSDs, screens, RAM, CPUs, GPUs, laptops, phones, and are all commodities. I don't care about any of them past their specs and build quality. > Samsung + Huawei -> Google Oh come on. That's some serious reaching to prove your point right there.
      - walterbell 6y ago
        Not in the slightest. Samsung tried to launch products that were rejected by Google via OEM licensing. Their commercial offerings are subject to external rules.
        esperent 6y ago
        Every company's products are subject to external rules. All these huge companies constantly fight in court over trademarks, intellectual property, and so on. The products were not "rejected by Google", they were rejected by a court somewhere. And Google are at the receiving end of many such cases themselves, in many jurisdictions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America
- azinman2 6y ago
  Symbian was a terrible OS that was impossible to program for and needed to die. iOS rightly changed the entire paradigm, and they didn’t have the vision to catch up.

lproven 6y ago

By all means please do educate me on what I am not seeing. I once saw a British OS, Symbian, used around the world. I saw a Finnish company's phones used around the world. A little British computer maker designed what's still the most popular CPU architecture, ARM, but the company is long dead. I understand many of the world's hard disks come from Thailand and Malaysia -- but from factories owned and run by Western Digital, Seagate, etc. Yes, every country is part of the world market, but the salient point is who manages to break out of their own national market. I am trying to think of Asian companies who make and sell computers or computer-related tech internationally. Samsung, Toshiba, Hitachi... But they run American OSes and use American designs. Sony and Nintendo don't, but then they don't make CPUs or GPUs, do they? Sony's PCs run Windows, like the Japanese laptop vendors' do. When Sony made PDAs, they ran PalmOS; when Sanyo did, they ran Windows CE. American dominance was not so universal just 25y ago. Can we identify what happened? Is this all "worse is better"?

esperent 6y ago
> I understand many of the world's hard disks come from Thailand and Malaysia -- but from factories owned and run by Western Digital, Seagate, etc. And the largest manufacturer of screens, ram, and SSDs is Samsung. When it comes to smartphones, again, Samsung is top, then Huawei, and Apple is third. Laptops? It's Lenovo, a Hong Kong company. HP is second. Game consoles? Sony and Nintendo are top there, MS is third. (Edit: and CPUs, top is Arm, Japanese.) Saying these companies don't impact the world market is just plain wrong.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ExThermoGuy 6y ago
  I think his point is that they're all clones, or running American OS, or selling excellent quality commodities (in the sense that as a designer or engineer I don't care much about the part past its specs) Lenovo -> IBM Samsung + Huawei -> Google SSD, screens, ram -> commodity You might balk at SSDs being mere commodities (or screens for that matter). Surely Samsung SSDs and screens are better! Sure, and as a designer I might care. But I probably wouldn't, past the promised MTBF, viewing angle and contrast ratio. Put the SSD+display+CPU together and you get, for better or worse[1] , a largely American computing device. You don't get a BBC micro or an Acorn. Or a Setun. Nintendo is the only one who obviously stands out as different, making a unique computing device (albeit with an American CPU). Although even the N64 was largely an American design (SGI) [1] I think worse, in the sense that everything is a Unix monoculture.
  - esperent 6y ago
    > You might balk at SSDs being mere commodities Why would I balk at that? SSDs, screens, RAM, CPUs, GPUs, laptops, phones, and are all commodities. I don't care about any of them past their specs and build quality. > Samsung + Huawei -> Google Oh come on. That's some serious reaching to prove your point right there.
    - walterbell 6y ago
      Not in the slightest. Samsung tried to launch products that were rejected by Google via OEM licensing. Their commercial offerings are subject to external rules.
      - esperent 6y ago
        Every company's products are subject to external rules. All these huge companies constantly fight in court over trademarks, intellectual property, and so on. The products were not "rejected by Google", they were rejected by a court somewhere. And Google are at the receiving end of many such cases themselves, in many jurisdictions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Oracle_America
azinman2 6y ago
Symbian was a terrible OS that was impossible to program for and needed to die. iOS rightly changed the entire paradigm, and they didn’t have the vision to catch up.