How much does it take? I’ve pondered this a few times over the years for various business ideas, so yeah, I’m genuinely asking in a non snarky way… what does it cost to do an OEM phone ?

Millions, if you're willing to work with a Chinese manufacturer and just load your firmware on a relatively generic phone.

Still pretty pricy, but it’s a lower bar than most people probably think it is if the comments here are anything to go by.

Does make me wonder if there’s anyone out there playing middleman and doing a white label service at an even lower price point, they eyeball the market for design trends and OEM some generic phone designs and then sell them on to smaller shops like small MVNOs that don’t have a few million to spare doing a complete OEM phone of their own.

There have been white label phone manufactures since the original Windows CE based phones. HTC use to manufacture close to 80% of Windows CE phones sold by different brands.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/developer/htc-to-shed-white-l...

I guess more precisely I should say it doesn’t take “much” money to be an Android ODM/OEM and ship with AOSP.

https://us.nuumobile.com/android-oems-vs-odms-5-things-you-s...

I’m referring to the millions and of course cost per unit go down depending on how many units you commit to.

The hardest part is dealing with manufacturers and suppliers. In the US, building phones this way is not as popular as building vertical market hardware for kiosks and special putouse devices.

You choose your screen size. memory, SOC etc. It’s been awhile. But I spent a few years working in field services during the transition from companies using Windows CE to Android for industrial ruggedized devices.

But the result will suck. Sure you can do it but you'll be competing against Apple and Samsung who have invested billions and have the results to show for it. And you'll also end up as a system integrator because millions doesn't buy you your own chips so you'll be at the whim of the other companies investing billions like Qualcomm.

Everyone is at the whim of Qualcomm - including Apple.

The only two companies that aren’t just integrators are Apple and Samsung yet there are dozens of Android Manufacturers.