[AnthonyMouse]

A company who wants to make entirely their own car can do so and its customers can still drive it on the same roads and buy fuel from the same gas stations.

A company who wants to make mostly their own car and use some parts from another manufacturer can do that too:

https://www.hotcars.com/awesome-cars-powered-by-other-manufa...

This is the normal operation of a competitive market. Chelsea Truck Company wants their vehicles to be mostly Land Rover so they start with a Land Rover.

But Apple interferes with even that. If you wanted to buy iPhones to mod and resell, they stop you from putting your own operating system on it, and their operating system doesn't have drivers for your custom components.

[scarface_74]

> A company who wants to make entirely their own car can do so and its customers can still drive it on the same roads and buy fuel from the same gas stations.

A company that wants to make their own phone can do that and still use the same wireless providers.

> A company who wants to make mostly their own car and use some parts from another manufacturer can do that too:

A company that wants to make mostly their own phone can get ARM chips and cellular chips and all of the parts from plenty of places all the way up to getting contract manufacturers

> This is the normal operation of a competitive market. Chelsea Truck Company wants their vehicles to be mostly Land Rover so they start with a Land Rover.

So are you saying there is no competition in the phone market and people must buy iPhones even though 80% of the world buy Android phones?

> But Apple interferes with even that. If you wanted to buy iPhones to mod and resell, they stop you from putting your own operating system on it, and their operating system doesn't have drivers for your custom components.

Then fork your own version of AOSP and work with a contract phone manufacturer and sell your own product. Just like 100s of Android resellers do

[AnthonyMouse]

> A company that wants to make their own phone can do that and still use the same wireless providers.

Apple is not currently a vertically integrated wireless provider. Would you say that it's a problem if they were, so the only wireless carriers with widespread coverage are Apple and Google?

> A company that wants to make mostly their own phone can get ARM chips and cellular chips and all of the parts from plenty of places all the way up to getting contract manufacturers

Anybody can make a device that terminates phone calls. The issue is that you want to benefit the consumer by making something which is better than what already exists. And you have an improvement to contribute -- a better display or battery or form factor or app or a way to lower costs or whatever.

So what you want is to take the best available device, change it by only your own contribution, and get lots of customers because what you're selling is the same as what people already want, but better.

Which you can't do, because you can't get the rest of the phone people want. So instead of starting with an iPhone and making it 10% better, you have to start with a phone which is 25% worse, and then even when you make it 10% better it's still 15% worse and it's not competitive.

So then you don't even try, which is terrible for the consumer.

> So are you saying there is no competition in the phone market and people must buy iPhones even though 80% of the world buy Android phones?

There is very little competition for phone SoCs. It's basically Apple and Qualcomm, and Qualcomm sucks. OEMs buy from them because they can't buy from Apple. (Samsung keeps making an attempt but they're not that impressive even relative to Qualcomm and go predominantly into Samsung's own devices.)

Android phones have 70% of the world market because they cost less. They're only ~40% of the US market. That doesn't help you if you're trying to make a premium phone.

[scarface_74]

> Apple is not currently a vertically integrated wireless provider. Would you say that it's a problem if they were, so the only wireless carriers with widespread coverage are Apple and Google?

But they aren’t. The cell phone network is the infrastructure just like with your analogy, the road was the infrastructure that given enough capital, anyone can build a car on.

> Anybody can make a device that terminates phone calls. The issue is that you want to benefit the consumer by making something which is better than what already exists. And you have an improvement to contribute -- a better display or battery or form factor or app or a way to lower costs or whatever.

And cell phone carriers do that today. They add their own spin - foldable phones, ruggedized phones, phones with better cameras and either they manufacturer the phone themselves or use someone like Foxconn to manufacture the phones for them - just like Apple. Apple doesn’t make or design its own cellphone chip (yet) or camera assembly (Sony).

> So then you don't even try, which is terrible for the consumer.

Yet literally hundreds of manufactures do try.

> It's basically Apple and Qualcomm, and Qualcomm sucks

Again whose fault is that? Samsung isn’t a small company and it’s been around for literally a century.

> Android phones have 70% of the world market because they cost less. They're only ~40% of the US market. That doesn't help you if you're trying to make a premium phone.

Everyone says that Google’s phones are premium and some of Samsungs phones. Again whose fault is it that two multi billion dollar companies can’t compete on the high end?

[AnthonyMouse]

> The cell phone network is the infrastructure just like with your analogy, the road was the infrastructure that given enough capital, anyone can build a car on.

The infrastructure in this analogy is the platform.

You're trying to avoid the consequences by going another level up in the infrastructure. But you can always do that. Wireless networks run on electricity, power plants run on gas pipelines. The issue is that the layers of the infrastructure they do control (devices, operating systems) are being used to limit competition on the adjacent layers (app distribution, apps).

> They add their own spin - foldable phones, ruggedized phones, phones with better cameras and either they manufacturer the phone themselves or use someone like Foxconn to manufacture the phones for them - just like Apple.

Yes of course, they add them when they want to compete with other Android phones. The market for low cost Android handsets is quite competitive.

The issue is that if you want a ruggedized phone that runs iOS on Apple Silicon, or one that has a non-Apple app store, that isn't available. Even if there are both companies interested in making it and customers interested in buying it.

> Everyone says that Google’s phones are premium and some of Samsungs phones. Again whose fault is it that two multi billion dollar companies can’t compete on the high end?

Google is not really even making the attempt. Their interest in Android is to get it on as many phones as possible to promote the use of their services, and for that phones from other OEMs are satisfactory, so what do they care?

Samsung is only a fraction of the size of Apple and punches well above their weight, but there's only so much you can do in a bidding war against someone with more money.

[scarface_74]

> The infrastructure in this analogy is the platform.

The road carries all types of vehicles from place to place. The cellular network carries data from place to place and any phone can use that network. Different physical manufacturers make stuff to go on the “digital highway”. I didn’t make that term up.

> Yes of course, they add them when they want to compete with other Android phones. The market for low cost Android handsets is quite competitive.

Most of Samsung commercials go after Apple. Samsungs foldable phones costs more than the most expensive iPhone.

> The issue is that if you want a ruggedized phone that runs iOS on Apple Silicon, or one that has a non-Apple app store, that isn't available. Even if there are both companies interested in making it and customers interested in buying it

I also can’t buy a gas powered Tesla.

> Google is not really even making the attempt.

You mean they are spending money creating products and advertising them during the Super Bowl and they don’t care?

> Samsung is only a fraction of the size of Apple and punches well above their weight, but there's only so much you can do in a bidding war against someone with more money.

You realize that Samsung makes its own processors? How much do you really think it costs to design a processor? Just like Microsoft, Samsung was making cell phones before the iPhone even existed and when Apple was basically about to go bankrupt. Whose fault is it that they couldn’t compete with a decade headstart?

[robertlagrant]

> and its customers can still drive it on the same roads and buy fuel from the same gas stations

Of course. And anyone can build a phone that is charged from a wall socket and communicates using standard mobile protocols.

> If you wanted to buy iPhones to mod and resell, they stop you from putting your own operating system on it, and their operating system doesn't have drivers for your custom components.

This industry is much younger. I wouldn't guarantee that Land Rover lets you even today mod its software system, but possibly it does, but then again, it also is in an industry that's been around 100+ years.