But, in Australia at least, it's not super easy to buy a Xiaomi. I have to go looking for them. Samsung is synonymous with Android, it's Apple or Samsung that people say, not Apple or Android.
People still look at me sideways when I say it's a Xiaomi (or Poco).
Australia isn't really a market that acts as any kind of leading indicator though.
hardly anyone would be tinkering their phone to make the hardware do more than the default applications.
The same is happening (or is already happened) to cars.
The companies do this simply because this is the way to grow their market. For every single person who finds enjoyment in twiddling with their tools, there are hundreds who just want the thing to work and get on with other things in their life.
Yes, there are economies of scale that come from chasing the middle, and yes, it's probably easier to just mimic an iPhone than to do the creative work to try to invent something better than what worked before. And yes, the tradeoffs, design goals, economic targets, and principles of repairability and customizability that go into, say, an F150 make those pretty popular trucks, but since Ford is still making F150s, and Chevy, and Dodge, and Toyota also have offerings that are direct competitors in that space, that doesn't mean that a hypothetical competitor can maximize their market share by making yet another F150.
Why does everything cluster into the same choices?
i suspect it's the same reason you get a cluster of the same stores/shops in a region.
It's the classic economic dilemma - Hotelling's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law)
The market doesn't know what it wants until the options exist. Until a culture forms.
Almost all companies are competing in one direction only, a race to the bottom. There's sometimes some semi-geeks freedoms offered, but usually those are gilded cages too. We'd have to go back some something like Maemo to see consumers getting something actually empowering, a portable mobile Linux+FreeDesktop offering.
Just like how most of us treat cars and stovetops as appliances?
Look, becoming omnipotent is an admirable pursuit, but time is a finite resource and by fuck most of us simply do not have enough of it. We can choose to become potent in something and most of us are in fact potent at something, but that isn't necessarily going to be electronics or computer programming.
Average Joe is more ignorant than ever in IT terms, but we are near a breaking point, and OEMs have felt it, trying to worsen as usual, and as usual such ideas will led them in the opposite direction.
I think the stated reasons are bullshit. Unlocking the bootloader isn't a process your regular customer base is performing, so it will only affect the hobbyists. They're basically stating they don't want the hobbyist community anymore.
And maybe that's a bit harsh given they're just dropping from three per year to one per year, but why? How much of a difference to their stated reasons will the change from three to one make?
I think it's just the tightening of a screw that's intending to squeeze out an element they no longer want.
(Or maybe it's to satiate an untrusting US government, to delay their own Huawei-ing)
Developers of what? If it affected every software developer out there, then yeah this is a major issue. But it's a small subset of developers - mobile developers. Actually, a smaller subset - the ones on Android, not iOS. And even smaller than that - not the ones who develop apps in Kotlin (what we see on the Play Store), but the ones who hack in C++ on AOSP.
Every community likes to imagine that it is disproportionately large and powerful and influential (unless being tiny is a flex) and the ROM community is no different. To put it in perspective, the size of the LineageOS install base is 1.5 million, which is 0.05% of the total Android install base - 3 billion.
To claim that this community will make any difference to the vast majority of normies who just want to use WhatsApp, TikTok and their bank app - it's a bit delusional if I'm honest.
And to somehow tie this to the US government, that's full on tinfoil hat conspiracy mongering. You cannot be serious.
That's so wild to me as an early millennial. For a good chunk of my life the smart phone didn't even exist and going back further computers were only for nerds. Now 3 billion freaking people using a computer every single day in a form factor that at one point I thought would be always marginal (vs desktops and laptops).
Where I am, Xiaomi is pretty much an enthusiast / hobbyist only brand.
That same one, or a different one, gets used as my 'house' device on WiFi only, so that my primary phone's battery gets used less and is therefore less likely to need charging if and when I need to leave the house.
I have one as a semi-hardware cryptocurrency wallet that can go online if necessary, but primarily is offline.
I also used to use one GPS spoofing in Pokémon Go - I actually found the intellectual challenge of getting it working far more satisfying than the actual act of playing Pogo 'remotely'. But I'm a couple of years 'sober' now and have no desire to regress.
I've also used a phone or two as webcams / security cameras. Permanently plugged in, but with the app ACCA (requires root) which limits charging to within certain battery percentages to minimise the chances of spicy pillows.
I bought Xiaomi's because they were popular for custom ROMs, and their popularity was based on decent hardware for a decent price with a boot loader that's unlockable without too much hassle.
Once the bootloader unlock becomes a hassle, fewer developers will want to touch them, so their popularity for hobbyists will decline, therefore their sales will decline, leading to even further decreasing popularity amongst developers.
It'll be interesting to see how much difference it makes to sales, but Xiaomi will no longer be a preferred brand for me to consider. Pixels seem to be great for custom ROM compatibility, but they're ridiculously expensive even on the second hand market. Motorola might be the new go-to.