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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

It's the same problem with Android currently which is that when every manufacturer is using the same OS they have to find a way to differentiate. In Android this means custom skins, custom apps, and the like. On Windows this means "free" antivirus, custom apps, and the like. It would be nice if they all just completed on hardware but then it's really a race to the bottom.

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Do consumers actually differentiate on these extras? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "Yeah I picked up a Lenovo laptop because the antivirus they package is better than Dell's" or "I got a Samsung phone because their skins are better than HTC's" I'd love to see the market research that backs that idea up...

I thought the real reason manufacturers do this is because they're in a very low margin industry. For computers they get some deal with software companies to pre-install their product, and similar for cell phones with service providers.

I'm not sure if the "free" antivirus counts as "differentiating", since it's almost always - without fail - either McAfee or Norton.

With that said, differentiating by custom UIs on top of the base platform (i.e. the Android approach) would be much better, and would be actually-useful differentiation rather than a matter of "well which company's going to fuck me over the least with their preinstalled shitware?".

I personally dislike custom UI's shipped by the phone manufacturer because more often than not it leads to delays in OS updates due to them needing to adapt their UI to core changes. Customization (by manufacturers) can come at a very high price for the end user in terms of security and upgradability.

Right, but that's leaps and bounds better than "free" McAfee, no matter which way you skin it.

This also isn't exactly universally true. HTC was pretty responsive in getting Lollipop out to my One M8, for example, even with its whole "Sense UI" shebang.

Not to mention I find 90% of those custom UIs look horrible and cluttered compared to Google's original design.

Their perspective is that they're adding value through software (i.e. without spending more money on hardware). Not that I agree with this line of reasoning...

Are you certain of this perspective or is this your best guess? I see people say this type of thing all the time, and I don't see any official statements corroborating them.

I picked it up from here: http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what-we-think/rep...

It's still only one sort of business strategy. Not every hardware company is necessarily pursuing this line.

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