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This is an extinction event for the low-cost cell phone companies. How are they going to survive if they can't sell their $100 phones profitably for 2 years? I
by reenorap 6mo ago
This is an extinction event for the low-cost cell phone companies. How are they going to survive if they can't sell their $100 phones profitably for 2 years? I think many of the low-end companies will simply sell their allocations of RAM and close up shop.
- alsetmusic 6mo agoThis is my greatest concern. So many small players will be wiped out. Consolidation is assured. Always great for consumers to be under the thumb of increasingly large companies.
- pseudohadamard 6mo agoWill it be such a big deal though? Currently people are swapping out their phones for another model that's exactly the same but with a different number at the end of the name every 12 months. This could just mean that the unnecessary churn dies down a bit, and companies taking advantage of it have to find a new line of business.
- lelanthran 6mo ago> Will it be such a big deal though? Currently people are swapping out their phones for another model that's exactly the same but with a different number at the end of the name every 12 months. I don't think they do that at the low-end (nor the high-end, though that doesn't matter here - higher-end manufacturers have a small margin they can eat into). People on the low-end phones want a new phone, they just cannot afford it!
- jeffreygoesto 6mo agoBut why? I just replaced my Huawei P20 after eight years and only because nobody cares about app sizes and compatibility.
- crote 6mo agoYou just answered your own question. There's also the issue of phones occasionally getting broken, of course.
- pseudohadamard 6mo agoAnd would you consider yourself representative of the phone-buying public in general? My desktop PC is from 2008 but I'd never consider this to represent anything like common usage. In fact it's so unusual that I get to point it out in posts like this.
- Aerroon 6mo agoBecause the phones stop working well? I write part of a post, open another tab to go look up some information, come back to the post and what I've written is gone, because the memory got dumped. That's the reality of using an old cheap phone.
- wolvoleo 6mo agoIt is pretty insane to have an 800MB app where you need to create an account, just to be able to change two settings on a DJI microphone.
- einpoklum 6mo agoEven in the mid-end: If you buy a phone which you find to be decent, but affordable, and are not out for chasing the latest gimmick - there is no reason it would not last you 6 or 8 years easily - before applications start assuming the presence of better hardware, or a newer Android version than you have etc. Naturally you will have to protect it from physical damage, and maybe replace a battery at some point.
- throwaway2037 6mo agoThis comment makes no sense to me. I exclusively use very low-end phones from Xiaomi. I buy a new one roughly every two years. Each new phone has a better screen, camera, CPU/GPU, charging, and sometimes more RAM/storage.
- michaelt 6mo agoTake a look at a comparison of the iphone 17 and the iphone 12 https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-17,iphone-12 https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-17,ip... Is the newer model better? Sure! But it had 4k 60fps video, optical image stabilisation, a "super retina display" etc five generations ago. The specs have kept improving, but it's not a quantum leap in performance.
- kasabali 6mo agoiPhone 12 wasn't low end
- nandomrumber 6mo agoThe same applies at the low end, the grand parent comment even agrees. You buy a new phone every two years, it comes with a camera, a cpu, a gpu, a host of sensors. Same as phones did two years ago, and ten years before that. I don’t use my current smart phone in any ways that are different to the iMate PDA2K I had twenty years so. https://www.gsmarena.com/i_mate_pda2k-962.php https://www.gsmarena.com/i_mate_pda2k-962.php
- Aerroon 6mo agoHow often does your browser freeze up when you open a webpage? How often does your phone browser dump its memory when you switch to another tab and then switch back? Eg if you were writing a post and opened another tab to go check some fact then the post in the original tab gets deleted. Because that's what happens if you use an old cheap phone in the modern day. I even had a phone that would occasionally just crash when on a heavy website and the onscreen keyboard popped up. That was not at all infuriating!!! Especially when it would crash when I try to refine a Google search.
- yread 6mo agoAre there really that many small players? Aren't they all just subbrands of Xiaomi, Lenovo and Oppo?
- muvlon 6mo agoThere are a bunch of subbrands but there are also a lot of genuine small Android phone companies, especially in China. Some of these serve some interesting niches that might now disappear due to this DRAM supply issue, e.g. Unihertz for extra small phones or CAT for extra durable worksite phones.
- kjs3 6mo agoIs there any 'guide' to this ecosystem...because 'odd niche communications gear' is always interesting.
- inemesitaffia 6mo agoTranssion
- pfannkuchen 6mo agoIs it a coincidence that Oppo sounds a lot like how Chinese people sound when they say Apple?
- karimf 6mo agoThis is huge problem for developing countries. Most people here have $100-$200 phones. iPhone is a luxury.
- joe_mamba 6mo agoForget developing countries, iPhone is a luxury even in some European countries, when rent is 500+ Euros and your take home pay is ~1000. After all the other bills you're not left with iPhone money, which is why 100-200 Euro models of Chinese brands are doing so well. It's easier to name the countries where iPhone ISN'T a luxury, as you can count them on very few hands.
- heraldgeezer 6mo ago[flagged]
- ReptileMan 6mo agoWon't matter - if enough people in developing countries can afford iphones, apple will just rise the prices.
- cnd78A 6mo agoMany countries would develop much faster if there weren't bombed nor maintain by puppet dictactors from (economically) developped nations (USA and france keep doing this intensively, while countries like Germany dont mind supporting fascist states). (PS: I'm not woke, not even Marxist).
- znpy 6mo ago> This is an extinction event for the low-cost cell phone companies. How are they going to survive if they can't sell their $100 phones profitably for 2 years? This is a great thing to happen, actually. Those phones are all essentially trash that ends up in a landfill within a year or so. They should not exist at all.
- wolvoleo 6mo agoNo they don't. I know people that use them for many years. They exist not as a gimmick but for people who seriously can't afford anything better. Those people won't have the funds to replace them on a whim either.
- bigwheels 6mo agoThanks a lot, Sam Altman / OpenAI. Their little $100bn war chest being used for obstructive / destructive purposes will wipe out multiples of that amount via economic ripple effects. All in an attempt to keep a stranglehold over AI via competitive resource starvation. Basic.