Comment by izacus
4 years ago
Really? Because things like cabriolet cars, speciality cars, high-end audio equipment, luxury furniture and many others exist.
If anything, mobile phone market is exceedingly horrible because of consolidation into a single product with not much choice.
Maybe we could have a market for very high end phones that cost $3000, but I haven't seen anyone try to fill that niche yet. Maybe it isn't there?
Even if it was there, that doesn't mean the phone would be small. People who want small phones aren't necessarily wealthy, so they would only be going after the market for the intersection of 'wealthy + want small phone'... which might be a very small market and not worth pursuing.
That market absolutely exists, and a few people have tried to serve it over the years. Here's an old example, a Samsung phone promoted by Jackie Chan that cost about $3,000 back in 2012:
https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-sch-w2013-jackie-ch...
And in 2018, One Plus had a $3,000 phone:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/this-3000-oneplus-6-is-the-...
I think this is not exactly what GP was talking about. These are normal phones with an expensive marketing gimmick.
The "RED Hydrogen One," by that fancy camera company is closer I think. At least it had some story that could hypothetically have ended with a compelling technological reason for it to exist (RED is supposed to know cameras). Although, it didn't seem to work out either, but with a sample size of 1 it could be a fluke of poor execution.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/red-quits-the-smartp...
I'm surprised none of the really consumer-oriented camera companies have broken into smartphones. Camera stuff seems like more of a selling point for smartphones, than phone stuff. But, it seems like they never really want to dive in fully.
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The fact that none of these still exist proves that there is no market. It does prove that companies tried to see if there is one.
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Huawei Mate X2?
Samsung made some folding phone which were pretty close to $3,000 on release IIRC. Pushing-the-envelope android phones can reach eye watering prices, and early adopters always pay up too. Personally I would rather wait for the 3-4th generation of anything THAT wild as the tech was very much not ready for launch.
Grains of sand getting into the hinge and mandatory factory-installed screen protectors are not things I want to deal with on a purchase that expensive.
The current folding generation launching this year (4th Gen) is likely to be the next big thing, rumors are huge price drop and likely a more polished experience as production is ramping up for more units.
> Really? Because things like cabriolet cars, speciality cars, high-end audio equipment, luxury furniture and many others exist.
Indeed, all those things are much much easier and cheaper to produce than a smartphone. You could do them at your home.
Try building from scratch a small Android phone at home.