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I think Lenovo purchased IBM Laptop/Desktop division before becoming global player.
I do agree that if China wants they can do it because businesses in China has supply of unlimited money from Chinese state owned banks.
I also heard that every Chinese business is indirectly owned by Chinese government because Chinese state owned banks have invested in these businesses.
Yes, IBM's factories were in China and when they wanted to close out their desktop/laptop division, a deal was struck to leave the factories in place and Lenevo started with the Thinkpads. Lenevo had stated in one of their releases that they intend to be the dominant maker of laptops internationally. Well... they are getting there for sure. As for being state owned, some real truth in that the government does leverage the businesses and more so, international businesses.

Oppo at one time made Blu Ray players and were considered the best in the business. Many fanciers of quality players were extremely distraught to see Oppo leave that market. As for their phones, extremely popular internationally but can't make a dent in the USA.

For today - I simply exercise 'choice' as to what products I buy as best I can.
 
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I can’t argue that, but who’s to blame for that?
Still, there are choices out there…
The #1 problem is apps. You create a smartphone, you use some kind of open source or licensed proprietary OS, then you elicit streaming hosts providers to make a version of a app for your smartphone. It all depends on the status of the company making this and how much incentive for the streaming company to provide a app. It is irrelevant if its insanely great, they will all just ignore you. Because if someone already has so much marketshare you don't stand a chance getting started. This is why most just use android.
 
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the first iPhone ? did any one had a phone like iPhone before iPhone was launched ?
ARM Macs kicking any other laptop ass ?
till date I don't think anyone has made a trackpad that can compete with MacBook Air/Pro.
Battery life.
List is long.
As long as you don't try to do anything computer'ish.
 
the first iPhone ? did any one had a phone like iPhone before iPhone was launched ?
Back then per Wiki the iPhone competitors were the LG Prada, LG Viewty, Samsung Ultra Smart F700, Nokia N95, Nokia E61i, Palm Treo 750, Palm Centro, HTC Touch, Sony Ericsson W960, Sony Ericsson C905 and BlackBerry.

The LG Prada was similar in some aspects

440px-LG_KE850_Prada_Hauptmenü.jpg


I find your whole post citing other products as misleading when we are only discussing smartphones. The 2007 iPhone was not among the earliest smartphones. It was unique in many ways using a ARM processor, but it also had to shake off a lot of completion back then. The problem with todays smartphones is technology has evolved a lot and for a lot of people comparing smartphones has become a lot more competitive again in the last few years. We also been saying for awhile that smartphone manufacturers have been running out of ideas on what next years models can provide to attract buyers. The general trend of holding onto your phone longer is impacting sales also. All of this effects Apples iPhones sales and marketing.
 
so, as this thread is about smartphones - are you saying there are no meaningful choices besides the iPhone?

I am saying that when the competition all run android, there really isn’t much difference besides specs and price regardless of which android phone you choose.
 
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I am saying that when the competition all run android, there really isn’t much difference besides specs and price regardless of which android phone you choose.
That's what's sad about that Android ecosystem. Because there is so little ability to differentiate, it becomes a race to the bottom on cost, thus conditioning consumers that that's all that matters. That makes it difficult for phonemakers to launch premium phones at high enough volumes that it challenges the status quo and convinces people to pay more, perpetrating the cycle. You can see the results of this when you compare the quality of iOS apps versus Android apps. Meanwhile Apple, with no one else to undercut them and offer a product that's "basically the same, but worse and cheaper" can convince its customers to pay more for new features, which is why new features (eg NFC, dual camera) only become "standard" after Apple offers them. And that willingness to pay more for quality extends to the app ecosystem as well.
 
Only so many ways to make a slab of glass with sensors and speakers on it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ad yet the Industry has been thriving and evolving from decades:

From Plastic phones and screens of feature phones and camera add-ons and lenses.
Many from Nokia pretty much created every conceivable (besides roll-able) phones anyone can make even today.

Now its metal/ceramic, or other recyclable material along with glass.

Nokia dawned upon us these form-factors:
Clamshell smartphones = Communicator/Communicator 9000/etc to E90
Taco phone = 3390(?)/NGage/NGageQD - in fact the very first phone designed specifically with calls, SMS and gaming.
Lipstick phone! Yeah they actually made one with jog-wheel navigation and it had a VGA camera lol. Definitely limited edition and not very useful.
Luxury phones = 8800/8890 etc THESE were the first luxury phones on the market anywhere! Using polished metal. Then created the Vertu brand - waaay too expensive for the global market at that time.
^ of these luxury phones, Vertu brand was ALSO the first to Co-Brand phones, another industry first:
Ferrari, McLaren ... selling to F1 team members to help market.
- furthermore the first phones to have premium leather on them as well.

Google AndroidOS partners in the first 3-4yrs have tried:
While simultaneously keeping Apple's iPhone hardware design language, kept trying to keep phone hardware language relevant at that time:
> Keyboards (aka BlackBerry killers/fighters): HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc have kept trying to keep keyboards on their early AndroidOS phones to mimic their existing hardware or competition market.
> Single/multi-hinged smartphones - HTC, Motorola, and Nokia where BIG on doing this with Android / SymbianOS.
> Sliders for Gaming controls, Sony's XPeria line had a PSP like Android phone.

^ these btw all will kept the 'slab' design when not in-use or specific extended use design.


I'm not certain if this was due to Apple's patent for Multi-touch kept the competition out for just about 5yrs or exclusive hardware production of that technology or something else. Still it took ANY of Apple's competitors about 5yrs. You'll also recall Hon-Hai (aka Foxconn) was not making that many other phone assemblies to even 1/10th of the scale back in 2015 let alone today. Once contracts and facilities expanded and more workers arrived in cities from rural China to work therein, THEN that's when we've seen a HUGE influx of competition.

As manufacturing facilities completed being built, contracts for assemblies and sub-components exponentially increased, to the scale that nothing else in the world could be compared to. I'd say the human race is the closest, scaling from global population of 1.2billion in 1900 to just under or over 8 billion today (that's just over 100yrs!). Regarding manufacturing that's when we began to see not consolidation but a trade of powers in the smartphone global space. HTC was purchased by Google, BlackBerry, Motorola, and Nokia ALL stopped production, sold off their brands for cellphones/smartphones or licensed them off to new manufacturers and moved onto other business ventures. Ericsson, which make cellphones on their own originally (a way to market their cellular network gear), partnered with Sony for 10yrs and made some incredible magic which pushed the industry forward:

User expandable storage: Sony Duo, MicroDUo, etc. Sony already had already had expandable storage and used in their Sony Clie PalmOS PDA's. YES Motorola partnered with some company to make TransFlash - rebranded as MicroSD ... first used in Motorola's Java smartphones and their RAZR feature phones, but the industry push was SonyEricsson. Nokia followed with MMC which miserably failed; SD kicks it's arse.​
> Music, Pictures, Files (end user documents or J2ME executable to run new software.​
> Camera for phones - to the best of my knowledge and recorded Ericsson's T68m was the first phone to use a camera - by add-on attachment. Just at launch, the partnership began with Sony and thus the T68m was rebranded as SonyEricsson T68i.​
> Bluetooth - Ericsson.​

After the original demise of feature phones, and after the first 4yrs of smartphones, yes we've stuck mostly and predominantly on slab phones. Only the last 4 to maybe 5 generations from Samsung/Motorola have we gone to foldable form factor. There are a LOT more limitations currently with foldable phones to resolve first before that could potentially become the mainstream form-factor, yet I doubt it will. I see rollable phones coming close to 50% mainstream against the slab design form-factor before before we eventually get to AR + slab as the dominant use case : as it's more useful and compatible beyond just phones, but also our computer screens, interactive surfaces (walls, mirrors, tables etc).

So with that entire diatribe and essay above to give you scope over a 25yr span of phones across the globe, Is there only a limited ways to make slab phones? Rudimentary there is only 1 way, so yes. Does that mean all slab phones will look the same regardless of manufacturer, a resounding NO.

3D glass, hard or smooth edges, camfered edges, stepped edges, etc. smooth or hard gradual steps to accomodate camera bumps, back to no camera bumps. Why does periscope lenses technology need a such a large camera bump on several models/generations of phones from Huawei, Xiaomi, and Samsung yet barely even 3mm camera bump on the XPeria 1 III & IV from Sony such a VERY small manufacturer in terms of yields of products made?

Basically what I'm saying is there are so many ways to interpret a hardware design, implement it, and then the design of the surface that really helps sell it.

What most of us forget is these manufacturers are not just making phones as a 1 off, far too expensive to be profitable. Their making generations of phone models to keep users buying. At the end of the day its not just the hardware case/accessories/decals/branding - its the OS and features that USE the hardware that KEEPS users buying and sticking to the model or brand ;)
 
And I suppose Jobs' "thermonuclear war" comment was also China war rhetoric? This is just normal competitive business rhetoric in comparison.
The major difference here, and I mean truly, incredibly major, is that Jobs did not have or control any thermonuclear bombs. Or even an army, navy or Air Force. There is a substantive difference between war-like language from a business man versus a head of state with all of the foregoing instruments of actual warfare.
 
Yes, IBM's factories were in China and when they wanted to close out their desktop/laptop division, a deal was struck to leave the factories in place and Lenevo started with the Thinkpads. Lenevo had stated in one of their releases that they intend to be the dominant maker of laptops internationally. Well... they are getting there for sure. As for being state owned, some real truth in that the government does leverage the businesses and more so, international businesses.

Oppo at one time made Blu Ray players and were considered the best in the business. Many fanciers of quality players were extremely distraught to see Oppo leave that market. As for their phones, extremely popular internationally but can't make a dent in the USA.

For today - I simply exercise 'choice' as to what products I buy as best I can.
The lack of dent in USA or nOrth America is mostly due to
1) no carrier partners to subsidized and help with marketing,
2) no warranty support being a global player/option.

This seems to have changed but only with the recently launched Oppo Find N2 Flip but still doesn’t include Mexico, USA nor Canada in its “Global Launch. :(
 
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