85% Smartphones Powered by Linux

I’m specifically talking about the assault on Apple’s stance in the EU, across several fronts, including app store, “repairability”, Spotify vs. Apple, etc. I haven’t yet seen US regulators get excited, only lawsuits and occasional Congress-critters.

If, in the USA, consumers are suddenly (2020Q4) preferring Apple’s philosophy, that also seems ok, and those who bet the other way with a majority slice for a decade (Apple is shown as minority on your graph until Q4 which seems such a jump as to be suspect) don’t get to have sour grapes that they were mistaken and try to claw away consumer choice.

So long as any consumer believes paying less(!) for an “open” handset you fiddle with yourself to assemble and maintain from multiple sources is better than paying more(!) for a closed curated one, and as long as devices are available for that choice, it seems the choice is a market choice that remains available and fair, without need of regulation to take away the right of the 15% or 40% or even 60% to make it.

If one day so few consumers make that choice that it’s no longer available, then it’s time to decide whether that choice was mistaken, whether a digital phone may be more like a digital watch, where you do not want PC-era maintenance responsibilities and security concerns interfering with your enjoyment of the appliance for a frictionless job to be done.

Tech paths dead end or mature all the time, it’s ok. Almost seems inevitable that Phone Shack will go the way of Radio Shack and we engineers will find a new thing to hack instead of building radios from transistors or phones from bits.