I think the problem is that many companies, if they don’t see a path to monopoly or near monopoly, cash out and close shop.
For example Fairphone has been going for 12 years. There’s no reason BlackBerry couldn’t make a basic phone running Lineage and stick to a tiny profitable market share.
They could stick to a tiny market share but not a profitable one.
The problem is you need a large team of developers for the operating system and designers and engineers for the hardware. This means thousands of employees. Do you know many phones you have to sell to pay the salaries of 2000+ employees? At least a million phones a year at a gross profit (retail price minus total cost of manufacturing) of $200 per phone.
You don’t need thousands of employees. The Lineage group provides the os. It need only be customized. LineageOS itself is 9 developers working part time as a hobby.
Hardware design is typically 3-5 people with 10 support staff. I’ve worked for a couple hardware startups.
LineageOS is Android. If you use that then you’re not competing with Android, you’re joining it. The OP wants BlackBerry to provide an alternative to iOS and Android.
We’re not talking about hardware startups trying to build a minimum viable product, we’re talking about a company trying to market a product to regular consumers.
BlackBerry had a successful consumer product prior to the launch of the iPhone. Since then, the bar has been raised to the stratosphere and BlackBerry no longer comes even close. With thousands of employees they couldn’t do it.
Android runs on Linux. That doesn’t make you Google. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.
We’re not talking about hardware startups trying to build a minimum viable product,
It once worked for a publicly traded company. It was a few guys doing the custom Asics, one guy doing the board layout and two guys doing the software. This wasn’t a minimum viable product. It was a commercial product used by every large bank in the world.
Have you heard of Micronics motherboards? I knew the person who did their first motherboard. It was one person.
SayYes2Depress@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Capitalism requires companies to constantly grow or they risk being taken over either by being purchased or out-competed in the market by it’s competitors to the point where they cant sustain. It forces them to try to monoplise just to survive.
Ive been looking at the Fairphone as my next phone for some time now. My only concern is how long they intend to sell replacement parts for. I do not see any parts for fairphone 1 or 2 parts for sale. And currently in America only fairphone 3 is for sale. My concern is if I buy it how long it will be before the 3rd model’s parts are no longer available.
(Unrelated: Is your username a King Gizzard reference?)
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Companies do not have to chase increased profits. That’s a choice. Genda Shigyō has been making paper products for over 1,200 years.
It doesn’t matter if other companies grow larger than your company as long as you make a profit.