Seems like some people are a bit shrill.
The Calm Before the iPhone Arrival Storm: The Last Days of the Cell Phone Industry Cabal « TWO A DAY
However, you have to wonder. Like most Finnish families we have several retired Nokia phones around the house. I am intensely brand loyal to Nokia. Some of the earlier simpler Nokia phones were incredibly robust -we had an NMT car system that lasted until the network was phased out. Also some of the early GSM phones were long-lived. But lately the war has been to push down price while adding features. What does an ex-factory production cost of €40 per handset get you these days? Not much.
My wife recently went through three rounds of repairs with her Nokia 6103, which failed to work properly right out of the box. The salespeople said it was a susi, but refused to swap it with another new one until Nokia’s guys here in Finland (!) had been given a chance to diagnose and repair the problem. After two cheap fix attempts, they finally replaced the entire front half of the clam. Crappiness is, of course, one outcome of never-ending cost-cutting. Apple, which has made some crappy products on occasion, nevertheless, has fought its battles mostly in that part of the market less sensitive to price (e.g. electronic publishing), while letting the price wars rage in such areas as game computers. I suspect the Apple iphone will not be cheap.
My own experience with features is that I never use them. However, my wife and son often find a few of the features very useful and use them heavily. In that sense, the on-board features are like a menu at a restaurant, you can eat whatever you like, but you are unlikely to ever eat the entire menu. For the last 20 years, global manufacturing businesses (and to a lesser extent remote service providers) have been on a quest to exploit differences across countries in terms of labor cost and inputs. But ultimately there must be a bottom and we may be finding it. Certainly, China’s great economic advance has come at a massive environmental cost. The decision to go to China has also diluted the “Made in Finland” brand pretty badly, which is odd because countries like Japan have managed to keep brand loyalty in, say, cars, by pointing out that critical components are still made in Japan and that only the most fungible parts and assembly are done elsewhere.
On the matter of why it may be wiser to reduce choice than quality, go to Google and watch the video.
