If I were a dictator I would permit only 4-5 models of smartphones. Why produce huge amounts of shit if you can just make a few decent machines? That would save an enormous amount of resources and energy.

Less competition would mean higher prices.

Models, not factories. I don’t care what factory would produce them. Plus the concept of “competition and price” is an abstract thing from economics textbooks. You know, like “communism” or those kids buying a crazy numbers of watermelons. In the real world “competitors” would form cartel and regulate prices as they wish. And please, don’t counterargument with a reference to something that happened in '53. That is no more relevant than late Roman economics from II century CE :)

The less competition there is in a market, the less incentive companies have to reduce their profit margins to gain market share. Antitrust legislation is typically used to ban cartels, but with so few market participants, the need to collaborate in fixing prices is lessened.

Compared to all the configurations of smart phones in the early days (flip, sliding keyboard, adjustable cameras, etc), we basically only have one model of smart phone (excluding folding phones).

Even 5 models per company would be bad for the survival of that company.

• You need a big button dumb phone for seniors.
• A basic smart phone for kids
• Dumb phone for people who don’t want smart phones. Or those prohibited by law from having a smart phone.
• Basic smart for low income.
• Premium smart for most

That’s five. No corporate friendly model, no alternative form factors for people that want to burn money (the most profitable phone), no mid range. Just extremes. Now if a competitor comes out with a new idea you have nothing to retain customers. Now you’re right for a hostile takeover over.

Unification and standardization. 5 models. Intricate tuning is done by customer PC style.

Forget it, you people are so accustomed to being corpo-slaves that you don’t deserve a dictator like me :)

You people?

I’m not even talking about the user side. I’m focusing on the business reality side. Any manufacturer that only puts out five models is going to be out of business. It’s not the way I want it but it is the business reality.

I worked in the cell phone industry. Every manufacturer that only carried five models is out of business. Even Apple had to expand its offerings because they were losing market share and putting themselves at risk.

Five models creates more monopoly power, not less. Things would get so much worse than they are now. We would need to change the entire market place demand structure in order to make 5 models a workable option.

And you don’t want people tuning cell phones. That’s a recipe for brand damage and goes against the idea that their devices are ready to use for an easy and seamless experience. The customers would revolt.

Again, not my preference, business reality.

You did say if you were a dictator, not some kind of genius. So fair enough

I fear smartphones will soon be subscription only. It will essentially be a touch screen with a battery and a dumb chip that lets you stream everything via cloud, even your own menu. Updates will rarely happen to your device but from the cloud side too, meaning you don‘t get to skip a faulty update. Everything will be vibe coded too and as soon as you cancel your subscription your data is locked away in some data center. This is the bright AI future they keep telling us is inevitable.

Nah, everyone is just waiting on the Graphene supported Motorola phones to come out.

Me fr.

Are we taking bets on price yet?

That’s me

What a big surprise. They downgraded the memory on all of the new models, so people are using their old phones for longer.

Right now, there are no rugged phones for sale that have the Magsafe system, or it’s successor, QI2.

So, I’m just nursing my existing phone along until they’re available. My USB port stopped working about two years ago.

So are they blaming it on buyers not having any money or are they blaming it on themselves for not having product?

Step up please.