LG just had a good Q3. Then there are manufacturers like Xiaomi who are doing well.

There's really only 2 manufacturers doing gangbusters, Apple and Samsung, everyone knows that. But outside of those two companies the only ones still around are those that licensed OSes, everyone who has tried going it alone is out of business or in the process of going out of business. Do you really dispute this?

So, the only two companies doing well have pretty good control of their CPU and supply chain and only 1 is using Android. I think Samsung could switch to FireFox OS and not miss a beat. Android isn't the strong brand to most consumers.

I thought you said they had to control "the whole stack"? You just meant the CPU? There we might actually agree, I think went you look at what has happened in the mobile landscape since smartphones became popular I think what you see if that the companies whose only business is making phones are the ones that have struggled the most. Those that had businesses which feed into smartphones have done better.

I said BB needed to control the whole stack since it would be a nightmare for them to move to Android where the OS provider would be a competitor in messaging. Sadly, BB is not going to build its own CPU. I clarify with meaning the software stack and hardware they can actually build.

BB has a very nice OS, but has done a very poor job of it and spent quite a lot of time backing Adobe's fading tech. There is a lot of room in getting development simpler, but they need to get some more software expertise.

They still have a place if they can start building with a phone at the bottom-end ("free") or low-cost for pay-as-you-go plans. That gets them numbers and then upselling their messaging. Cheap Android lives there (mostly in a poorly implemented non-upgradeable state) and iPhone doesn't.