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Re:Most people don't care about quality by MichaelZuo on Saturday January 04, 2025 @11:20AM (#42595625)
The vertical integration is why the $110 phone exists in the first place…

If you arbitarily move the pricing bar then of course there may be more competitive small companies, relative to the new baseline.

Re:Most people don't care about quality by AnthonyMouse on Sunday January 05, 2025 @03:43PM (#42604856)
> The vertical integration is why the $110 phone exists in the first place…

There is no evidence of that. If anything more vertically integrated devices (e.g. iPhone, Samsung flagships) cost more, because a vertically integrated market increases barriers to entry and impairs competition.

A Samsung phone might very well have a Samsung CPU with Samsung RAM and Samsung flash made in Samsung fabs with a Samsung battery and a Samsung screen. Galaxy S24 Ultra, ~$1000.

Meanwhile, the $110 phone was the Moto G Play. That's a Qualcomm CPU with Samsung RAM, a "Motorola"-branded battery which is probably Sanyo or Panasonic, and a third party screen and flash because Motorola doesn't make those either. It's $110 because it's full of fungible commodity parts.

The issue is, some of them -- especially that CPU -- are poorly documented and full of tightly integrated but closed source firmware/drivers. Which has nothing to do with the manufacturing cost of the hardware. A fully-documented open-source RISC-V CPU is not going to cost more.

Re:Most people don't care about quality by MichaelZuo on Sunday January 05, 2025 @06:25PM (#42605957)
“No evidence”… according to who?

Based on what arguments that such evidence does not exist?