I think the problem is that many companies, if they don’t see a path to monopoly or near monopoly, cash out and close shop.
For example Fairphone has been going for 12 years. There’s no reason BlackBerry couldn’t make a basic phone running Lineage and stick to a tiny profitable market share.
They could stick to a tiny market share but not a profitable one.
The problem is you need a large team of developers for the operating system and designers and engineers for the hardware. This means thousands of employees. Do you know many phones you have to sell to pay the salaries of 2000+ employees? At least a million phones a year at a gross profit (retail price minus total cost of manufacturing) of $200 per phone.
FairPhone just makes Android phones, so they don’t have the cost of developing their own operating system. The OS is the real killer app. It’s why iOS and Android are so dominant. It requires billions of dollars in investment to be competitive.
Capitalism requires companies to constantly grow or they risk being taken over either by being purchased or out-competed in the market by it’s competitors to the point where they cant sustain. It forces them to try to monoplise just to survive.
Ive been looking at the Fairphone as my next phone for some time now. My only concern is how long they intend to sell replacement parts for. I do not see any parts for fairphone 1 or 2 parts for sale. And currently in America only fairphone 3 is for sale. My concern is if I buy it how long it will be before the 3rd model’s parts are no longer available.
(Unrelated: Is your username a King Gizzard reference?)
I think the problem is that many companies, if they don’t see a path to monopoly or near monopoly, cash out and close shop.
For example Fairphone has been going for 12 years. There’s no reason BlackBerry couldn’t make a basic phone running Lineage and stick to a tiny profitable market share.
They could stick to a tiny market share but not a profitable one.
The problem is you need a large team of developers for the operating system and designers and engineers for the hardware. This means thousands of employees. Do you know many phones you have to sell to pay the salaries of 2000+ employees? At least a million phones a year at a gross profit (retail price minus total cost of manufacturing) of $200 per phone.
FairPhone just makes Android phones, so they don’t have the cost of developing their own operating system. The OS is the real killer app. It’s why iOS and Android are so dominant. It requires billions of dollars in investment to be competitive.
Capitalism requires companies to constantly grow or they risk being taken over either by being purchased or out-competed in the market by it’s competitors to the point where they cant sustain. It forces them to try to monoplise just to survive.
Ive been looking at the Fairphone as my next phone for some time now. My only concern is how long they intend to sell replacement parts for. I do not see any parts for fairphone 1 or 2 parts for sale. And currently in America only fairphone 3 is for sale. My concern is if I buy it how long it will be before the 3rd model’s parts are no longer available.
(Unrelated: Is your username a King Gizzard reference?)
Companies do not have to chase increased profits. That’s a choice. Genda Shigyō has been making paper products for over 1,200 years.
It doesn’t matter if other companies grow larger than your company as long as you make a profit.