3 ms·

Apple has an interest in keeping their devices alive, since they can make money of the store and services. Android manufactures want you to throw the phone away

Apple has an interest in keeping their devices alive, since they can make money of the store and services. Android manufactures want you to throw the phone away and buy a new one. Since manufacturers didn't demand long support, Qualcomm didn't provide updates for their SoCs. This meant Fairphone couldn't support their phones even if they wanted to, which is why they used am automotive chip in their new phone — which is nearly the same as a phone chip except the 13 years of updates.

scarface_74 3y ago
> Apple has an interest in keeping their devices alive, since they can make money of the store and services Isn’t that the free market working the way it should without government interference?
- mschuster91 3y ago
  The problem with an unregulated free market is that eventually one or two companies get so dominant that it is virtually impossible to challenge them as a competition, especially in fields that require immense amounts of money to break into. One might even argue that the end game of capitalism is to acquire a monopoly, which one can then use to extract rents as one feels free to do, or just keep milking locked-in customers (like IBM and Oracle are). It took Apple, flush with cash from iPhones and iPods, a decade worth of work to create a SoC able to throw punches at eye level with Intel and AMD, which themselves grew to the unholy duopoly over decades. Chipmakers have it even worse: TSMC has all the cards, Samsung and Intel have completely fallen behind with no chance in sight that they'll match TSMC any time soon. All the other competition has gone bankrupt or stopped at lesser nodes because they couldn't keep up the pace. There's no disrupting that, not even if you are an actual nation state.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    So guess what happened when the EU forced browser choice in Windows? It had no long term affect on the market share. Geeks just always hate when normal people make their own choices using their own free will. Every failure that you cited were well funded companies who failed to execute. Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft failed trying to introduce phones. The market worked as it should - poor execution led to failure.

scarface_74 3y ago

> Apple has an interest in keeping their devices alive, since they can make money of the store and services Isn’t that the free market working the way it should without government interference?

mschuster91 3y ago
The problem with an unregulated free market is that eventually one or two companies get so dominant that it is virtually impossible to challenge them as a competition, especially in fields that require immense amounts of money to break into. One might even argue that the end game of capitalism is to acquire a monopoly, which one can then use to extract rents as one feels free to do, or just keep milking locked-in customers (like IBM and Oracle are). It took Apple, flush with cash from iPhones and iPods, a decade worth of work to create a SoC able to throw punches at eye level with Intel and AMD, which themselves grew to the unholy duopoly over decades. Chipmakers have it even worse: TSMC has all the cards, Samsung and Intel have completely fallen behind with no chance in sight that they'll match TSMC any time soon. All the other competition has gone bankrupt or stopped at lesser nodes because they couldn't keep up the pace. There's no disrupting that, not even if you are an actual nation state.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  So guess what happened when the EU forced browser choice in Windows? It had no long term affect on the market share. Geeks just always hate when normal people make their own choices using their own free will. Every failure that you cited were well funded companies who failed to execute. Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft failed trying to introduce phones. The market worked as it should - poor execution led to failure.