South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware | Hacker News Reader

South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

wired.co.uk

169 pointsmschuster91108 comments

I'm surprised that so many people believe in the free market ideology (e.g. market regulation is always wrong). The error in this type of reasoning is very simple. They first assume an idealized market model and then derive conclusions from it – but the idealized market is just too different from real-world markets. It's really that simple but many really smart people fall for it.

I agree with your thinking, though I think we'd still have bloatware on phones even if there were more competition among wireless carriers.

PC market is quite competitive, yet most computers come with bloatware. The difference is, they can be uninstalled, but I suspect that may be due to OEM licensing agreement with Microsoft, than the competition among PC makers.

But at least with PCs, some of the revenue gained from bloatware is passed onto customers by the way of lower pricing.

In the end, this regulation is beneficial as long as the wireless market is competitive, so the carriers simply don't pass off the cost back onto the consumers. In that sense, I share with some other poster's sentiment that government regulations should focus on ensuring competitive landscape first.

I think that if the market was fully competetive, everyone was fully informed and both customers and companies made optimal decisions, then most phone wouldn't have bloatware. Otherwise, it would mean that phones with bloatware are actually better than (perhaps slightly more expensive) clean phones. But I just don't think this is the case, bloatware simple doesn't have much real value.

Even in extremely competitive market, there's room for bloatware if many customers don't mind it in exchange for lower pricing. However, what a competitive market WILL ensure is discovery of an 'acceptable level & implementation' of bloatware that 'some' customers will tolerate given the choice of lower pricing vs no bloatware.

Think two versions of Amazon Kindle with and without ads. There's market for both. The problem with carriers is that their monopolistic positions enable them to engage in abusive practices. (like installing bloatware to the point of annoyance, prevent user-removal, and not passing on savings)

I think one big feature of bloatware is differentiation. They want customers to choose phone based on which bloatware it has or doesn't have, because software is cheap. If everyone just wanted to maximize benchmark points or whatever technical spec for a given budget, and it was possible to do straight comparisons, profit margins would decrease. So they make up those extremely hard to compare offers to prevent that. Since customers will presumably try to find a product on the efficient surface, no one wants a product that is inferior in every respect, the approach is to make dimensionality as high as possible.

With offer a you get a fast cpu, a weather app, and free surf between sunday 1pm and sunday 3pm. With offer b you get lots of ram, control your tv app, and cheap calls within our network.

The main difference it that I can install a fresh copy of Windows or Linux on my PC and it works, while there is no such thing as "stock Android". It depends on the hardware, so the OEM have all the power.

What do the Nexus lines of phones come with?

The "Google Experience" version of Android

CyanogenMod is the equivalent of installing a fresh copy.

at the cost of your warranty

I got a Nexus S loaded down with crapware I couldn't even use (since it was all in Chinese), but which drained the battery like you wouldn't believe.

Within a couple days, I had removed whatever godawful contrivance was on there when I bought it in favor of CyanogenMod. Truly, the OEM (NB: the OEM here didn't even install the crapware) has all the power.

People seem to think that the free market will automagically drive towards their arbitrary measure of goodness because, in theory, if consumers share that arbitrary measure of goodness they won't buy something that doesn't offer that. But in reality, there is only one truism in free-markets, businesses need to make money and that sometimes runs contrary to whatever issue I personally think the market should optimize for.

This is a straw-man; while some may believe all consumers have and require perfect information, not all free-marketers do.

If there are many under-informed consumers, these will often select pseudo-randomly, and the few well-informed consumers will select well. The small number of well-informed consumers will often make the difference between a profitable product and an unprofitable product (especially in highly competitive markets).

In many cases, ill-informed consumers will pay for information about products which are significant to them; this is why "Consumer Reports" sells new and used car buying guides, as well as why video game reviews exist, and why Amazon.com has reviews.

In cases where purchases are less costly to the consumers, or a repeat purchase is involved, people will often correct based on personal experience and brand reputation, which is imperfect, but relatively effective.

You're overlooking the huge factor that is marketing, which effectively injects misinformation into the market...

Your assumption that a few well-informed consumers can make the difference between an unprofitable product and a profitable one is only true if sellers cannot significantly increase their profit margins by offering an inferior, but hard to distinguish, product at the same price.

Were you responding to my post? It seems non-sequitur. Since you seem lost on this point, how about I provide a notional example?

Suppose you have a very strong personal belief, it doesn't matter what it is, but let's say for purpose of argument that your belief is that no car should be sold without Rattan Cooling Seat Covers. You point to all kinds of studies about how it improves circulation and prevents hemorrhoids and is more comfortable and all that. Because it's a health issue you take it up as a moral obligation that these be sold with every car. One car manufacture even goes so far as to sell some of their models with this cover and you point to this one as an example of what should be done.

This is your "arbitrary measure of goodness".

If you were also a free marketer you'd argue "there shouldn't be a regulation to force car manufacturers to put Rattan Cooling Seat Covers, the market should drive towards it". But what the free market knows, even with imperfect information, is that putting $100 of Rattan Cooling seat covers in every car doesn't make them money. In fact, the one maker that puts them in their cars are only marginally popular so it doesn't seem to be driving sales and if every car maker put them in, it wouldn't be a market differentiator anymore anyway! The market knows, even imperfectly, that there is no demand for such a thing in their products, and the after market serves the small percentage that really want it.

But you argue, "this is a moral imperative! Circulation!" You post on message boards about the benefits of Rattan Cooling seat covers, you raise money and take out advertisements, you do everything to build market demand short of going to your local congressperson/parliamentarian because you don't believe this should be regulated and the market will simply correct for your arbitrary measure of goodness...even if the market isn't interested.

Suppose you're successful, now every car is $250 more expensive (you can't possibly believe they'd throw in $100 of Rattan Cooling seat covers, available at any after market stores, at cost do you?). Congratulations, arbitrary measure of goodness is met, cars are more expensive. But as a result fewer cars are purchased. Do car makers make more money? Does the free market win? After all, they're making $150 on each set of seat covers! They should be! You're a hero, asses are saved and car makers make more money, win-win!

But we don't actually know the outcome. Cars are more expensive, fewer people buy them as a result. Or the used market grows as people can buy cars without Rattan Cooling seat covers without the extra "ass-tax" as it's come to be called on internet car enthusiast forums. It could turn out to be a wash, who knows? The market has imperfect information and can't predict the outcome.

But it's more likely that you'll fail because the market, because of imperfect information, isn't interested because there's no guarantee that they'll make more money selling cars with the seat covers, and lots of potential they'll lose money doing so. One company interprets this imperfect information as still sells their cars with the seat covers, but the rest interpret it more conservatively and seek other money making opportunities instead.

Just because it was your arbitrary measure of goodness, doesn't mean the market will follow it.

Just like in this case, just because a bunch of nerds on tech forums don't like carrier crapware installed on phones, doesn't mean the market has any reason to correct for it. Even in the presence of a competitor that doesn't install the software on their phones, the market still chooses the crapware infested phone at rates exceeding the alternative. The market has actually already chosen crapware infested phones at something like 88% of the global smartphone market. And companies, using this signalling, and the bigger signalling of the revenue that comes with allowing carriers to install garbage on their phones, have listened to this imperfect information and sell phones with this "feature". The market optimizes to make money, not solve our arbitrary measures of goodness.

The alternative is for us tech forum nerds to try and raise awareness about why this is vaguely bad for consumers (it's usually mildly annoying at worst to the vast vast majority of consumers and likely has almost no measurably impact on their purchasing decision), and convince the market to drive towards phones that don't have this problem. But it's an uphill battle.

The result of this legislation has three possible outcomes.

1) Phones will cost more. The revenue that went to Samsung for whoring out their phones to various carriers will simply be passed along to consumers.

2) Phones will be made more cheaply so prices can remain at parity. Features will be dropped, or upgrades won't happen till technology advances a bit more and BOMs can fit within some profitability model.

3) Phone makers will feel a great wave of sympathy for their consumers and the small minority who has an arbitrary measure of goodness for "don't install garbage on my phone I can't remove" and continue on as-is, eating into their margins and making less money.

I can tell you that I'm not betting on #3.

Perfect markets need perfect information and rational players. This doesn't happen in the real world. People buy shiny bloated things and complain later. And then buy the next shiny bloated thing.

Also, in technology, product features move forward much faster than there's time to markets to 'find equilibrium'. So, I guess when smartphones stop advancing in features, people will find more value in those phones that don't have bloatware.

The choice is often between a dull, bloating thing, and a shiny bloated thing, sadly.

The reasoning you describe is not the only reason people oppose market regulation. Personally, I find the idea disgusting that somebody could be imprisoned (and killed if they resist) simply for selling something to somebody else, something that the other person was happy to buy.

The idea that violence is perfectly justified just because somebody provided a shitty phone experience almost physically sickens me.

Well, it rarely leads to actual violance. But I get your point. The way I look at it is that citizens collectively own this place, so they can collectively decide on the rules. Laws and regulations are just group decision on a high level.

I'm sorry, but you're committing an error in your reasoning: one doesn't need to assume that markets are perfect to oppose regulations; one just needs to consider that, as bad as free markets can be, they're never worse than the political system that creates the regulations.

Arnold Kling endorses free markets not because they are foolproof or flawless. They aren’t. Arnold supports them because the alternative is generally much worse: an especially flawed institution that fosters unusual amounts of foolishness.

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/klinging-to-reality#ax...

I'd like to see some proof that they are better? I consider them on par with each other.

Mainly, because I don't see how Free Markets don't collapse into a Regulated Market by the will of major players? If you are in a relatively Free Market and you gain a monopoly it's wiser, in short term, to invest into instruments to prolong your monopoly, rather than research and development. In other words it is in interest of major monopolies to create regulations to stop competition.

You are correct that investing in attaining a government granted monopoly has a very high return on investment.[1]

This is exactly why many free-market advocates believe that the government should not be allowed to regulate at all, or at least without very strong evidence that the intervention is necessary and proper, as well as limited in time and scope. These people believe that regulators are subject to 'public choice' problems.[2]

[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1375082

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

Are you just pointing out an error in his/her reasoning, or do you actually believe what you said? If the latter, do you consider regulation regarding food safety, medical profession and energy industry bad?

I'm playing Devil's advocate in at least half of what I write on political issues; often I don't have a strong personal opinion, since I'm reasonably aware of my ignorance.

So you think that antitrust laws are wrong?

Anti-trust laws are at least poorly implemented, and at worst intended to protect local special interests (against the trusts and their descendants).

>"[W]e have no coherent and comprehensive account that differentiates between legal and illegal practices. Nor do we have any good way of devising remedies in complex cases that don’t create more distortions than the illegal practices they are supposed to eliminate."[1]

[1] http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/18/christine-varney-antitrust-...

That's possible (I have a very vague knowledge of the antitrust laws in the US). But a good antitrust law is better than no antitrust law. Do you think that a secret price-setting agreement between AT&T, Verizon and Sprint should be legal? It would be profitable to these companies. In a model, competetive market, this wouldn't work, because a competitor would immediately appear on stage and started offering equivalent products for lower price. But the actual market is absolutely different, that's why regulation is needed.

Have you considered that the US mobile market may be less competitive because of other regulations? Who assigns spectrum and shuts down unlicensed providers?

Yes, that's certainly possible. My position is that zero regulation is often not the optimal amount of regulation.

Regulation is an ill-defined concept, so that statement is meaningless to me. If you mean the same as when people usually call "unregulated", which actually means heavily but baldy regulated, then we're in agreement.

You shouldn't assume that I think regulations are bad from what I wrote; I didn't say it was my position.

I didn't assume it, that's why I asked. Anyway, what exactly was the error in my argument above? All I said was that the common reasoning "regulation in model market is wrong, therefore regulation in real market is wrong" is flawed. Perhaps there are other reasons why regulated markets are always under any circumstances wrong. If so, I'll be happy to discuss them, although I'm convinced they're flawed too (lot of anecdotal evidence).

It's not an Apple, Nexus or Windows Phone problem, it's a 'free' Phone OS (Android) problem. The price of a cheaper phones has to come from somewhere.

That makes no sense at all. If anything, the makers of Windows Phones would have more incentive to add crapware in order to offset to license costs without having to raise the price.

And iOS doesn't even have a price tag.

I'll explain: The cheap Android phones do this to earn a few bucks from the provider and/or crapware providers. The audience interested in cheap Android phones is less educated than people paying a premium for their phones. People pay a premium to get a good phone with a good experience. Crapware will kill marketshare.

If Windows Phone added crapware they'd be dead in the water. I can't see them doing this, there is too much competition in the market.

No. The providers want to have the crapware and simply won't subsidize a phone without it, which means that phone does not sell. Apple is able to prevent that only because their brand is stronger than the providers'.

The audience interested in cheap Android phones is more educated (or more price sensitive) than people paying a premium for a status symbol.

> If Windows Phone added crapware they'd be dead in the water. I can't see them doing this, there is too much competition in the market.

Funny then that they have always done just that: http://forums.wpcentral.com/nokia-lumia-521/229156-bloatware...

Thanks for the reply. Windows Phone indeed has apps you can't remove, just like Apple they're mosty standard aps and ringtones. From your link: "You can't uninstall any of the core operating system apps from Microsoft. I just helped my neighbor clear out all the bloatware from the carrier. And you are correct that you can NOT remove any of the pre-installed ringtones. Why, I have no clue, but it is, what it is. It's just not this phone, but all the WP8 devices you can not remove the existing ringtones. If you add ringtones, you can remove those. " So, you can remove the carrier-app-crap. Unlike most cheap android phones.

With regards to Android consumers: Android Is Popular Because It's Cheap, Not Because It's Good http://gizmodo.com/5977625/android-is-popular-because-its-ch...

The last study conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project shows that Android is the chosen smartphone of people without money. Among respondents, 22-percent of those with annual incomes below $30,000 were Android owners, as opposed to just 12 percent for iPhone. With those towards the lower-middle class, the trend holds: Android owns 23-percent of incomes up to $50,000, with iPhones at 18. The data makes it clear: the less money you have, the more likely you are to opt for an Android phone over something more expensive.

So you just disproved free market economics with "very simple" reasoning along the lines of "their assumptions are wrong".

Yes, many of the conclusions are wrong, because the assumptions are wrong.

As usual arguments against free market ideologies are based on misunderstanding.

They don't assume an idealized market model and don't derive conclusions from it. I don't see why I should elaborate when you're happy with simple contradictions and patronizing comments like "you fell for a simple trick".

Well, I can't defend against your statement, you say I'm wrong, but don't say why exactly.

> free market ideologies

The name "ideology" suggest that the whole theory is built on top of some assumptions or dogmas. What are they?

That statement is true for every industry not just laptops. Generally, government intervention to give "choice" is far better than something that bans a product outright.

With this kind of regulation people will now get into the technicalities of what constitutes a "bloatware" and will spend countless hours in legal battles.

This is why I sold my wife's Samsung and got her an iPhone again. I rather pay 700 for something made to delight me then 300 for something that can be used to show me crap apps

This is a false dichotomy. The Nexus 5 is $349 off-contract and has no bloatware. The Moto X is going on sale for just $300 off-contract tomorrow (the regular off-contract price being $400).

The Moto X comes with unremovable bloatware if you are on Verizon.

That's if you get it though Verizon, its better to (byod), not buy on contract...

I think the point is that, regardless of how you get your iPhone, an iPhone will not have bloatware pre-installed. Same thing for Macs.

And regardless of how you get your iPhone, you are stuck with Safari as your default browser. I would rather buy a phone that has bloatware (that can be disabled) than buy a phone on which I am not free to change the default applications.

That said, you can have the best of both worlds by buying a Nexus device.

That's what I thought, but there are actually a bunch of Google apps that can't be uninstalled too.

My old Galaxy Nexus became unusable as Google services got more aggressive (eating all the RAM if background service calls failed due to poor connection). The phone would literally restart in the middle of every third phone call, but the option to uninstall the main culprits like Google Currents was (is?) disabled. Sure I can install cyanogen, but I specifically bought the nexus to save having to do that.

I know it doesn't matter to you now but you could disable currents from it's own settings and never have it start again.

Depends on what you consider bloatware too though. For instance, the weather app on the iPhone is annoying to me and I never use it, same with the Mail app. I've heard Android users complain about having the Gallery app pre-installed.

Personally I don't consider any of those items bloatware, I just wonder where the line should reasonably be drawn.

There is plenty of stuff installed on iPhone that people might not want. I can't change the keyboard; I can use a different mail app but not for sending attachments; I don't use safari; etc.

These are all far far nicer that the junk installed by vendors (Orange in the UK is pretty bad). But it's still unwanted software that introduce frustrations for some users.

Perhaps you don't own an iPhone? Theres a bunch of unremovable crap on mine. A comically bad notes app that loses notes, a poorly implemented reminders app, weather app (branded with a asmall yahoo add), Games Center which I can only assume was made by people who actively hate games, and a stock market app also festooned with yahoo adds.

That's ignoring the disaster that is the unreplaceable browser and mail app.

I don't know about Nexus 5 but my Nexus 4 comes with Google's bloatware apps, none of which are uninstallable.

Mine even has a "HP Print Service Plugin" which is unremovable and wastes ~25MB. And unremovable Chinese and Thai IMEs. But at least it's a lot less bloated than my previous HTC phones (Desire and One X).

I uninstalled the 'HP Print Service' on my Nexus 5 without an issue ...

Hopefully this means I might actually be able to remove the Apple Stocks app and Game Center app.

One minor technical difference: you don't need to actually flash a new OS to your device to remove Android bloatware, "/system/app mover" will do the trick.

Of course this does not help if the manufacturer replaced core stock Android software with their own (Samsung), but at least in the case of Samsung I can't really complain on their replacements.

Doesn't the phone needs to be rooted for that to work? And rooting normally voids the warranty.

Rooting and flashing another firmware is an entirely different process!

Rooting usually involves setting a configuration flag, maybe hacking the bootloader, which is for most devices a point and click op. Flashing a firmware is "real" hacking compared to rooting!

Well, the average user does not know how to do neither, and removing system applications (all bloatware is set as system application) is impossible unless the phone is rooted.

What is the average joe to do to get rid of all the crap that inhibits performance and drains the battery at double the speed to boot?

Most crapware can be disabled. Not a great UX, but at least you can do something about it without rooting or flashing.

Yes.

My old phone had a bunch of branded stuff that could not be removed by app mover (unless that's something extra to the default app moving tool).

One example would be the "Orange Wednesday" cinema ticket software. I wasn't an Orange customer, I have alternative cinema ticket arrangements, etc. Just having to have that software on the phone was annoying.

Apparently, South Koreans got fed up with Samsung "additions" :)

This unwarranted government intervention is not good though I hate the bloatware.

Everytime I visit my parents I end up spending half an hour removing browser toolbars, make your PC fast software. So I bought them a brand new Lenovo laptop just to find that there were 22 different kind of bloatware from DNS related stuff to browser toolbars to some weird webcam and what not software.

No matter how much I hate them, these bloatware help reduce prices of the laptops making them more affordable to many. Let the market function well. Government intervention is unwarranted.

How much money do you reckon they saved on the laptop? How much is your time worth?

Are you implying that parent should be charging his or her parents for the work, or that he or she should cover the difference out of pocket?

Certainly he or his parents should value his time at something other than zero, and maybe be willing to pay a little more for a computer that is identical but demands fewer hours of AIDS removal.

If I were him then I think I'd be suggesting that people tend to ignore externalities when praising markets.

I was implying that the money saved on the laptop is pretty small, so this 'benefit' to laptop owners is pretty insignificant and totally outweighed by the extra hassle or loss in performance / reliability of the computer.

And I'd recommend to anyone doing tech support for parents that they carefully guide them into purchasing a decent, maintainable machine. It's not up to me to tell OP how that gets paid for. (I've ended up buying my dad a computer to avoid him picking up a 'bargain' machine from the supermarket, just because it'd be me that ends up fixing/reinstalling that crap and recovering data...)

Your observation is true for techies but not the general population. Understand that if there was no benefit to putting bloatware no company would have spent their resources on it. For me the benefit of saving $20 is small but not for many people out there. I know many people who think Macbooks are just white colored laptops.

this is an unsourced data point, but I remember reading (on multiple ocasions) that OEM installs can cost something from 10 cents to a dollar. So even at the high end, you're maybe saving 10 to 15 dollars...

And is this actually realised as a savings to the consumer? I'd imagine it works more like selling advertising space. The bloatware is another source of revenue. Not a means to lower prices.

If they were really concerned about maximising consumer value, they wouldn't keep picking dumb prices that end in '9.99'.

Prices are mostly determined by the competition and not by the seller. Say Sony manufactures a laptop at $100 and Lenovo at $102.

If Lenovo has to be competition they have to somehow shove off that additional $2 required to make themselves on par with Sony.

So every penny counts.

My friends tell me they earn anywhere between $1-$25 depending on many factors. Ignore the techies. Normal people search on internet to find the cheapest laptop they want. People spend hours and days to save $15 on a laptop. They do not understand the difference between Computer with bloatware and Computer without bloatware.

I have met many people who talk about "Ask Menu" on internet explorer and come to think that it is a part of IE.

Under perfect market assumption, governement intervation may be wrong. But the laptop market is very different from the theoretical perfect market model.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_market

And the cellphone market is worse yet, much, much worse. At least here in the US, I can't speak for how it works in South Korea.

A regulation like this in the US would just be a bandaid (one I'd welcome) on the much, much larger problem of spectrum use/abuse resulting in few enough players to allow massive price fixing and few real consumer options.

There isn't a violin in the world small enough for me to play when the government issues regulations to protect consumers against the horrible actions of cellphone carriers (and by extension the cellphone vendors that serve them), ISPs, cable companies, etc. They are all fucking horrible and lobby incessantly for government protection when it benefits their lockin and then cry like some little bitch koalas[1] who fell out of a tree when the shoe is on the other foot.

[1] http://www.textfiles.com/uploads/koalas.txt

This is OK, so long as the social consensus is aware of this fact. When average people hear "This comes with Windows 8", there is an inherit understanding as to what that means, and I don't think the bloatware is assumed, or that the average consumer is even aware that it is bloatware, and not part of the experience marketed to them.

I'm not sure how you would introduce bloatware to the average consumer, but right now it just comes across as a sneaky decision, not consumer-driven one.

There's stuff that Microsoft ships as part of Windows 8, when it ships to OEMs. You could take the view that all of it's wanted, even though it includes things like Bing apps. (Historically, the US government tried to stop Microsoft including IE, and the EU tried to stop it including Windows Media Player.)

Then there's the stuff that OEMs ship on real PCs. Microsoft doesn't know what they ship, but it usually includes PUPs or Potentially Unwanted Programs. Some of these are added by the manufacturer (particularly HP and Lenovo) and some of them are added because of paid distribution deals. They may be "trialware" such as anti-virus software from which the OEM makes a recurring income.

So there are three types of non-essential program, and I don't see how most consumers can possibly tell them apart.

This situation did involve some US government intervention.

The US DoJ anti-trust case against Microsoft enshrined the OEMs' right to ship what they liked, and prevented Microsoft from charging the top 10 OEMs different prices. That stopped Microsoft from, for example, offering deals to OEMs who would install Windows free of crapware or with optimized performance.

I'd have a lot to say about the Korean government's interventionism, but I believe they're right for once.

Firstly, they aren't banning carriers from shipping phones with preloaded crapware, they're forcing them to make it uninstallable, as every non-system app should be.

Secondly, you obviously have no idea of the state of the market in Korea. Carrier subsidies are still the norm, your typical Samsung smartphone ends up costing 50% more than in open markets like Europe. Moreover, consumers don't have a lot of options. HTC, Motorola and Sony pulled out. You cannot find non-carrier versions of the Korean phones. Windows phones aren't sold either. Basically you're down to overpriced iPhones or the Nexus 5 (which was the first Nexus to be released in Korea without some ridiculous delay compared to other parts of the world).

This law is about giving a choice to the consumer. It doesn't prevent carriers or manufacturers from pre-installing apps. All it says is make the app deletable. Would you also say all the other opt-outs as "unwarranted government intervention"?

> Let the market function well.

I am yet to ever see this. I also do not ever remember being able to choose between the same phone with and without bloatware so I am not sure how the market has ever been able to decide.

Will this apply to exported phones as well? I would assume that Samsung phones are produced in China and exported globally, not even touching South Korean shores.

Most definitely not.

Some of the bloatware comes directly from Samsung, but a lot of the rest needs to be customized for each carrier. Samsung probably uses a separate disk image for each carrier, so it would be trivial to add the "bloatware removal" feature only to disk images made for some carriers and not others.

Why people pay $700 for phone full of ads?

I got android phone from china. Battery 3x larger than Galaxy, 1/3 price and no bloatware. Lenovo has good build quality.

As much as I hate bloatware, this is another example of unwarranted regulation. Encourage more competition in the mobile carrier space and the free market will solve this better than any government can.

Why is this unwarranted?

The free market is there but we still have bloatware.

Road to hell, good intentions etc...

Does it need to be a regulation? Silly regulations is what made South Korea entirely dependent on Internet Explorer.

The regulation you mention here is certainly outdated NOW, but when it was passed it was a very pragmatic decision.

The anti-bloatware law is more than welcome, because competition keeps failing to reach the desired outcome. Regulations are exactly the right thing to do when competition and market fundamentally fails to reach what constitutes sanity, and converges to a local minimum.

Needless to say, such regulations should certainly be revisited when the root cause vanishes.

I'm sure they had the best intentions when the use of SEED was mandated. They had a cryptographic solution that was superior for a while. The repercussions of this, however, is a country that is entirely dependent on Internet Explorer. The damage has already been done.

Has the market really failed in this regard? Can the Koreans not buy Android or iOS devices that are free from uninstallable bloatware? What about upcoming Ubuntu or Mozilla handsets, will they too be filled with uninstallable bloatware?

I understand that some people see this bloatware as a huge problem, but people should think very hard before calling out for regulations.

So only because some regulations were/are bad, all regulations are bad?

Come on...

You're engaging in the Libertarian vice with the simplistic assumption that all regulations are created equal:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/08/the...

South Korea chose to mandate a technology rather than the desired outcome and never to update that law. They could alternatively have mandated multi-factor authentication or even simply made banks liable for any fraudulent transaction without any discussion of technology at all. These are all regulations but would affect the market in very different ways.

No, I don't think all regulations are created equal, but thanks for playing.

I have no problem with regulations in general. From the start here I said "silly regulations". Trying to combat bloatware by simply banning them is, in my opinion, silly. Even if you establish that this problem is so big that the government needs to get involved, there are other tools at their disposal. Tax incentives is one such tool.

Free market does not mean death to bloatware, quite the contrary. One of the reason why we have bloatware is because a significant amount of population does not really care about it and even if they do they prefer bloatware over an expensive laptop. The bloatware helps vendors reduced the prices of their devices by $10 - $20 making it more competitive.

Strange there are some phones who are cheap and don't have bloatware or less bloatware. How is this even possible with your theory? I'm sorry but I don't buy that marketing propaganda anymore.

I am also sure if you could give a customer the choice between a bloatware loaded phone and a clean phone (where he can install more games etc.) he would chose the one with no bloatware. He just has no idea there are ways to get rid of it. Some try over the known ways like the Apps preferences. But it's not working and they just don't know what to to about it.

This is where the government can help and if it does that why is this a problem?? You can still let people install apps afterwards that give them money or make whatever cheaper. But give them a choice!

"I am from government and we are here to help" - that sentence is mostly false and creates more problems than any help.

Bloatware is not the only way companies make phones cheaper. A company like Google can sell Nexus at cheaper rate than say Samsung Galaxy because the whole Android OS is like a Google Adware. For every search that you make on Google Nexus every day Google is probably making $10-$100 per thousand search queries. Google probably can afford to give away Nexus for free. Samsung however has no other way to monetize the phone after they have already sold it.

"I am also sure if you could give a customer the choice between a bloatware loaded phone and a clean phone."

I am all for it. Give consumer the choice. Do not ask government to interfere with it. Market is already sensitive to this. Microsoft has come up with MS signature brands. Sooner or later phone companies will have to follow.

Yes recently we've (again) learned how a free market helps us all irony off.

How come you are generalizing your criticism against all kind of government involvement? It's simply not true that all kind of involvement automatically creates more problems. Why don't you simply explain how it would create more problems in this case?

I was also not talking about Google vs. Samsung. I was talking about cheap "no name" phones available in some countries vs. brand products. Products which are selling on a price where only the production costs + simple profit margin matter (old school market if you wish). Not the show that Apple or Samsung are playing where the high price makes the product artificially more "valuable". This behavior is breaking your simple illusion of a market where we all profit and the competition and other simple market mechanisms are balancing the market in a healthy way. (I doubt that this illusion has ever been true...)

As I've said: the customer has no choice here. He can't get rid of the stuff. There is no choice. Today you pay sick amounts of money for a shiny phone that still has all that bloatware. Thats why we need an external force to give the power back to the customers. And the only force able to do that is the government.

Market is not sensitive at all. If it would be, we wouldn't need a regulation. MS will play the same game as soon as they become a relevant player on the market because the method above works and they just want to make more money.

My iPhone doesn't. Probably a market effect.

More of a marketING effect.

It certainly solved things with windows oems, right?

The idea of regulation is key to free markets — otherwise they cease to be free as soon as a majority of the players agree to collude against everyone else. The debate should be on how you regulate markets without crushing competition, not whether you can avoid it with magical thinking.

If it's a fully competetive market and everyone makes optimal market decisions etc., I agree, but these assumptions are false.

At last. Sip of water in hell. This should be done by every phones producer who cares about their good name. Just dreaming.

That means they ban Windows Phone or just Samsung's "theme" for Android?)

Android is open only when your time is free

Can't happen here soon enough.

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