The market tends to give consumers what they buy. This is distinct from what they ask for, which too is distinct from what they want, which too is distinct from what they like (and, while we're at it, from what they approve of).
A major point of markets is to try and figure this out iteratively. You can usefully think of it as an optimization algorithm that in practics prone to local minima but has some mechanisms to try and get out of them, which sometimes work.
So best we can do is observing "revealed preferences", which is what Economists call "what people actually choose".
As long as real competition exist, if it is possible to deliver what consumers really want then sooner or later someone will discover it, make a killing and prompt everyone in the market to follow suit or die.
It's easy to blame corporations but in fine I believe that the current situation has been driven by the choices of the consumers, i.e. all of us.
Sure we want better quality, repairability, longevity, but we also want cheaper, among other things. I think product ranges simply reflect where our priorities really lie.
To use two relevant examples:
Audio jack on phones: a lot of people want one, but companies seem to - one by one - eschew including it, and gain on the BOM savings and getting customers to purchase additional dongles/adapters. Phones are something you don't pick based on one particular feature. A new competitor that'd like to offer a good smartphone with an audio jack will have to first match many other features of competing smartphones. They won't be able to do all that and achieve similar price point, as incumbents benefit both from established supply chains and scale. Therefore, a new offering is going to be significantly worse in terms of features or price (or both), way beyond what established companies have saved on removing the jack.
Reliability of fridges: the three most important parameters that matter for customers are internal volume, price point, and overall aesthetics. The consumers would prefer a fridge that lasts a decade over one that last three years, but such decision is somewhat beyond the calculation horizon of most people (the reasoning is instead, "if and when it breaks, we'll deal with it") - and even if it was, it's very hard to verify. A company selling reliable fridges would have to first be able to reliably signal their reliability, which is hard to do. You could try offering very long (or lifetime) warranties, but unless you're an established brand, people ain't gonna believe it.
Then there's the general aspect of customer irrationality[0] wrt. price. People without much spending money prefer cheap products. There's a phenomenon in markets that probably has a name, where a market for a product bifurcates into race-to-the-bottom low-quality but cheap products, and high-end products (often for professional users) with low sales volume and high markup. The middle - quality products at moderate prices - disappears entirely. A new competitor, wanting to target the middle in such a market, will find themselves losing to both cheap and expensive ends.
--
[0] - Though I'm becoming less certain that this is truly irrational. The other day I saw some article highlighting that humans like to optimize for maximizing available options, in a way that comes close to mathematical optimum. Since in money-based economies money is, quite literally, unit of options available, this would suggest that this behavioral heuristic applies.
I for one "know" this by weighing HN anecdotes I've seen over the years - couple dozen saying that they sell solid stuff, and one or two saying that they used to sell solid stuff, but are now following the trend of replacing metal components with cheap plastics. How do I evaluate that? Brand trust isn't that strong a signal.
So as a consumer, I am unable to decide objectively, just using rumours if there isn't a hard guarantee or a trustworthy evaluation of the quality of all products I could pick. In that situation, I will price in the uncertainty, I will evaluate the rumours and the tendency to produce crappier stuff over time. And when in doubt, buy 4 cheap short-lived washing machines instead of 1 for 4 times the price.
A long warranty, while not a guarantee, is pretty correlated to the product lifespan.
A long warranty is only good if the manufacturer is trustworthy. But untrustworthy manufacturers are one of the causes of the whole problem.
A fix might be warranty terms defined by law, where the manufacturer can pick the duration and nothing else. Disputes should be settled in court or by a neutral board of experts.
Of course this is not a perfect measure, but I do think that a correlation would exist here.
My strong impression is it's hard to do. People may say the want kale, but end up buying donuts.
They weren't lying about wanting to be the kind of person who buys kale. But at the moment of truth, they got donuts "just this once".
Their tight grip on retailers also makes it hard to buy their products outside EU because nobody is willing to go through the pain. Add higher than average price and most smaller retailers just sell samsungs, lg and random chinese brands.
The biggest problem remains, manufacturers are not required to sell repairable devices and parts everywhere, requirement is only applicable to EU, so they will continue to manufacture trash and will never have their parts available outside EU. And no, those EUR parts will definitely won't fit 99% of their products outside EU.
That's a key aspect of the market here: People tend to compare on purchase price. If manufacturers have to compete on price, of course something has to give in order to make cheaper appliances...
The market tends to give consumers what they want.
It's not all bad, though, because this also puts pressure on manufacturers to optimise, including by using less material. Appliances tend not to be that bad either unless perhaps if you buy really cheap cr*p.