It's a bigger choice than that for them, or for anyone. If the government requires pervasive tracking, it's either allow it or stop selling phones in China, the

It's a bigger choice than that for them, or for anyone. If the government requires pervasive tracking, it's either allow it or stop selling phones in China, the world's biggest market for cell phones. And given that economies of scale matter (for things like swallowing flat rate development costs for those nice SOCs they design), it's hard to say goodbye to half your market. Samsung certainly won't take a principled stand on this and stop allowing app tracking. And in a competitive market, deciding to not sell cell phones in China means less development capital for designing the next generation of hardware. They'll start circling the drain and wind up like Motorola or HTC. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be consistent - just that choosing to not sell in China will mean losing everything outside of China eventually.