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The vertical integration is why the $110 phone exists in the first place… If you arbitarily move the pricing bar then of course there may be more competitive s

The vertical integration is why the $110 phone exists in the first place… If you arbitarily move the pricing bar then of course there may be more competitive small companies, relative to the new baseline.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> The vertical integration is why the $110 phone exists in the first place… There is no evidence of that. If anything more vertically integrated devices (e.g. iPhone, Samsung flagships) cost more, because a vertically integrated market increases barriers to entry and impairs competition. A Samsung phone might very well have a Samsung CPU with Samsung RAM and Samsung flash made in Samsung fabs with a Samsung battery and a Samsung screen. Galaxy S24 Ultra, ~$1000. Meanwhile, the $110 phone was the Moto G Play. That's a Qualcomm CPU with Samsung RAM, a "Motorola"-branded battery which is probably Sanyo or Panasonic, and a third party screen and flash because Motorola doesn't make those either. It's $110 because it's full of fungible commodity parts. The issue is, some of them -- especially that CPU -- are poorly documented and full of tightly integrated but closed source firmware/drivers. Which has nothing to do with the manufacturing cost of the hardware. A fully-documented open-source RISC-V CPU is not going to cost more.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  “No evidence”… according to who? Based on what arguments that such evidence does not exist?