Europeans would "survive", but end up with crappier phones. There's a reason why nobody buys nokia anymore.
As for what people are buying and not buying, according to statcounter [0], the smartphone market in the EU is a third Apple, a third Samsung, and then the final third is a scattershot of other Android devices, primarily Xiaomi.
This is in contrast with a 57.27% foothold in the US. It's a different world.
To put it into perhaps an even more grappling perspective, that whole green bubble vs blue bubble thing? I've first heard of it only just a few years ago from Marques Brownlee on YouTube. Never encountered it in real life prior or since.
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe
Funny you're invoking that when the fact that someone chose to buy apple at all means they thought it was the best option, according to their opinion. By banning apple you're necessarily making those people buy a crappier phone.
You do realize by the way that this would mean the majority of people here then consider iphones the crappier option by your logic?
And that's fine. Most people don't but Porches or Subarus. That doesn't mean they're "crappier"
What is driving your motivated reasoning? Why are you so invested in the ability for Apple to continue to have the ability to keep their app store locked down? How do you benefit from this decision?
I'm nowhere near a 2 year upgrade cycle but the fact that you think a 18 year old phone serves you "very well", and therefore Nokia phones aren't crappy shows how out of touch you are. There's zero chance the average person would think the same.
Enlighten me:
Do us a solid and just ignore each other for today?
MS would later re-sell Nokia to HMD in 2016, who still release some feature-phones, including ones running an "S30+" OS that has nothing to do with Symbian.
Honestly even if Google somehow decided to stop selling Android to Europe, something which seems extremely unlikely, it would swiftly be replaced by Chinese alternatives with no obvious loss of functionality.
Apple has zero leverage with the "we will stop selling" strategy. It’s just there so they look less pathetic when it comes to what they are actually doing: bribing Trump so he intervenes for them. We really have come a long way from the "Think different" company.
Exactly, it would be a brutal self own of Apple and Google and losing control over whole European market due to refusing to implement mild regulations. Pure bluff on Apple's and Google's side.