Not saying I agree with it, but there is a possible logic in there. A dangerous game, though, and it's not like Samsung is teetering on bankruptcy- I don't see what would warrant them to behave this way.
It's true that there is a subset of people who just buy the cheapest thing available — but there's also a pretty sizable segment of the population who might not be able to evaluate for themselves whether or not a phone is a good buy, but who do know that their "techie" nephew told them Samsungs are bad.
(I'm confused why this is fluctuating so wildly in the votes. Is it really so controversial that some products succeed on the strength of their brand rather than just price?)
It's true that there is a subset of people who just buy the cheapest thing available — but there's also a pretty sizable segment of the population who might not be able to evaluate for themselves whether or not a phone is a good buy
Absolutely. But the latter are the minority.
Unlike a lot of communities you might have visited, Hacker News tries very hard to keep the debate intelligent and civil, which requires a lot of self-policing. Your comment was a little more brusque than most people here prefer. Here are a few tips:
• Please make your points politely. You don't have to tiptoe around with your pinky out, but just try not to be rude. Saying things like "First of all, get your facts straight, Android troll" and "Get off Android's nuts" will get you downvoted even if everything you say is correct. (I didn't downvote you, by the way — we can't downvote responses to our own comments, for fairly obvious reasons.)
• If something seems ridiculous, give it a second look and try to find a way that it might make sense. For example, in this particular instance, the first sentence of my comment was a pretty transparent joke. I expected anyone reading a nerdy site like Hacker News to realize that nothing in that sentence was true. The second half of the comment dropped the joke and stated my point directly: A good reputation can pay huge dividends.
• If I had in fact been trolling, this kind of angry response would be precisely the wrong thing to do. Please don't continue unproductive conversations — if you suspect someone is trolling, just leave it be. In fact, even if they're not trolling but just stubbornly wrong, leave it be. Let that thread die. Accept that sometimes people are wrong on the Internet. Fanning the flames will only drag the signal-to-noise ratio even lower than it already is.