You're forgetting Unisoc/Spreadtrum and ZTE in 5G, and in 4G there are also a bunch of "lower-end" Chinese basebands that are heavily copied from / derivative o

You're forgetting Unisoc/Spreadtrum and ZTE in 5G, and in 4G there are also a bunch of "lower-end" Chinese basebands that are heavily copied from / derivative of one another. > Utterly unbelievable that no Western government has tackled that situation Yes, I think it would behoove most countries to do what China, Taiwan, and Korea have all done: force Qualcomm into antitrust settlement where they have to give up parts of their patent portfolio. > That this lack of competition disincentivizes all actors from making investments into code quality and security is obvious With the above said, I don't agree with this take at all; in my experience almost all hardware has horrible firmware, drivers/BSP, and software no matter how competitive the market, and whether it's good or not is driven almost completely by company culture / standards and not by market forces. I don't think the market selects for code quality at all. Janky low-level code is culturally pervasive across the globe. Hardware is delivered on strict fixed timeline and invisible to the end-user, and there's a very strong emphasis on functional testing and validation. This means that nobody cares what duct tape and bailing wire hacks are necessary to get units out the door as long as they pass validation, ship on time, and function. So, a culture of corner-cutting hackery is passed down from generation to generation of embedded engineer. The only places I don't see Bad Hardware Code happen are places where Software People are present and start imposing software culture on the Hardware People (Google, Apple, etc.), or companies making an intense, concentrated effort towards becoming more Software Company oriented (Nvidia). This tends to come at a major cost, too - yes, code gets better, but in exchange, everything starts taking forever (see: Apple baseband project).