I don’t want a dumb phone. I want a circa 2014 smart phone that is not expected to replace my laptop and serve as a constant data stream for corporations. I want to be able to visit a website on my phone and not have it try to get me to download an app, be ads on 70% of the screen, or just be unreadable formatting. Let me call, text, do a basic online search, play a stupid flash game, and take my money. Stop being greedy and trying to make everything I do monetizable
People want phones that don’t cost $1000+, lack basic features and constantly prey on their personal data. That’s what they want. Some express that by saying they want “dumb phones”, but the first part is the larger driver here.
A big part of the markup is simply the proprietary systems that run the phone. Apple’s restrictive OS, combined with the planned obsolescence strategy for older units, corral their customer base into buying newer models every 3-5 years.
Android’s open system allows for competitor brands to compete alongside the bigger publishers - Samsung and Sony and Lenova and Motorola. But even then, we’ve lost the more modular phone design to a hobbyist-hostile manufacturing strategy that precludes people from swapping out old batteries or doing basic repairs.
This, combined with data providers that try to bake the price of new phones into the subscription service (AT&T, Verizon, and Tmobile all offering “free” phone upgrades on painfully expensive plans) make the industry this extractive rent-seeking mess.
Go check a place like AliExpress: plenty of those there.
It’s not even as if dumbphones are amazingly complicated and highly dependent on complex software to work - the actual complex mobile network stuff comes inside modules that do most of the work.
If dumbphones aren’t reaching people’s hands in some countries the problem is in distribution or maybe lack or awareness: we do live in a Marketing-heavy society and people are almost conditioned to go for expensive branded stuff.
Go check a place like AliExpress
They’ve got a lot of referbs and knock-offs (and the occasional rocks-in-a-box scam), which is one reason why prices can seem suspiciously low.
Which isn’t to say American phones aren’t overpriced. But the way AliExpress vendors make money isn’t by simply undercutting American retails. They still have to source their product from somewhere, and that often means cutting corners or using substandard parts.
we do live in a Marketing-heavy society and people are almost conditioned to go for expensive branded stuff.
The other side of the marketing-heavy society is constantly being burned by “discount” products that are low-quality imitations. Case in point, back when Black Friday was a big deal, retailers would often source cheaper versions of well-known brands and use deceptive advertising to convince people the big TV you were buying at a 80% discount the day after Thanksgiving was comparable to the one you’d have gotten the day before.
Buying “full price” is often a hedge against getting one of these bait-and-switch marketing gimmicks.
