> the shanzhai could not only make an iPhone clone, they could improve it by giving the clone a user-replaceable battery
I don't think there is really a market for user-replaceable batteries, I have it picked as something the vocal minority want. But this is the productive way for people prove it as being a good idea or not.
It is very depressing that in the EU it would be legislated, in the US there'd be a big fight between the political parties about whether it should be legislated, and the Chinese bureaucrats are presumably too disorganised to mandate any which way so someone just builds it back in '09. Once the US would have been the home of this sort of free market capitalism.
There is a lesson here about bandwidth, governments, IP law and effective strategy.
The question is probably "is the market it represents sufficient to sustain a product line which focuses on it?"
There are plenty of niche manufacturers who prove that you can survive in the smartphone business selling something other than "the exact form factor Apple and Samsung are offering". Oukitel with their 20,000 mAh batteries comes to mind.
People didn't go crazy buying those Chinese knock-offs. They kept buying phones with the batteries sealed in them.
As a gut check, it does make sense people would prefer sturdiness and waterproofing to replaceable batteries and it seems likely that those things pull phone design in opposite directions.
People don't want to buy knock-offs and given up on Apple support and services, yes, they value that more than replaceable batteries, but if apple did provide replaceable batteries, people would happily pay a premium for it, even for the sake of "quick charge" alone.
What type of premium and how many people are you estimating? And how? Because Apple doesn't think it is worth the trade offs and they know a thing or two about making well designed phones.
I suspect that if you want a phone designed to different tastes, you will have to buy a phone made by someone else. Like the Chinese one under discussion.
I don't think there is really a market for user-replaceable batteries, I have it picked as something the vocal minority want. But this is the productive way for people prove it as being a good idea or not.
It is very depressing that in the EU it would be legislated, in the US there'd be a big fight between the political parties about whether it should be legislated, and the Chinese bureaucrats are presumably too disorganised to mandate any which way so someone just builds it back in '09. Once the US would have been the home of this sort of free market capitalism.
There is a lesson here about bandwidth, governments, IP law and effective strategy.