Doesn't the free market provide alternatives to brands who deny people the right to repair?
Not when they have a monopoly on the market, IE Samsung and Apple with smartphones and tablets.
It also assumes perfect knowledge in consumers, which we definitely don't have in this case (largely by design of said companies). They have successfully trained people to think their electronics are never cost effective to repair, which reduces market for spare parts and ups the cost further. If independent shops were allowed to repair with access to supply chains to buy OEM parts, these things would be fixable for cheap. Also, wiring/interconnection drawings would go a long way to allowing people to troubleshoot and repair these items.
You are correct. People have been well-trained. Contract to contract. Payments. Replace vs repair. Top two brands or whoever is advertising the most the week they needed or wanted a new phone.
There are many brands besides Samsung and Apple. I carry an Asus. On purpose. And it has been repaired locally and affordably when I broke the screen. Because i did not want to see an otherwise good phone go into the garbage.
Nokia, Blackberry and Motorola still sells phones. What is difficult is getting lose of the Android or Apple OS. In that category is the PinePhone (BETA) and few others.
https://kde.org/announcements/plasma-mobile/pinephone-plasma-mobile-edition/
That emphasized line right there is why, without significant, impactful international antitrust action against these companies, you're not going to see anything other than a fast progression to just a few players.
Just this year, LG dropped its mobile phone business. I recall when LG phones were highly competitive. How long before some of the other players decide to drop theirs? FWIW I'm on my 3rd Motorola, and my wife has a Pixel - I do agree with you that the smaller players* need to stay in business.
But the OS? I have to have access to email and some apps on mobile for work, and my choices are 1) carry a work device, 2) install the Android equivalent of AirWatch on my personal device, or 3) carry a personal device that is capable of running the mobile version of MS Authenticator to log into apps that connect to my equipment as needed.
1 and 2 are nonstarters, 3 is what I do because I only access what I need and am not touching CC information from my personal device.
So you'd have to figure out an enterprise-scalable way to integrate iOS and Android into existing IS infrastructure that is supportable by the offshored Tier 1 dev support.
But even then, does it matter? Gen Z is hyper-connected. iOS and Android are all they know. It's what entire school districts run off of, not to even mention their favorite apps.
I hate to sound like a Negative Nick, but I'd argue that alternative device manufacturers and alternative OS architecture is dead in the water, if not for the lack of current adoption, then for the future generations.
Although who knows, we might see a tech revolution from Gen Z when they decide they are done with the corporate monopolies that have been erected to date.
ETA - *In many other countries, the "small guys" here are the top players, so it might just be that they exit the US market rather than completely folding.
