Comment by fragmede
2 hours ago
Why, P.A. Semiconductor, of course! Yeah I'm just making shit up in my alternate history, but even in our reality there are several SoC manufacturers; Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, NVIDIA, AMD, Marvell, Rockchip, Allwinner. There are a lot of things out there if just want to run Android on a thing. Even more if I'm just trying to run Doom.
I want an SE4 with touch ID and a 4 inch screen and an A18 processor in it, not the monstrosity that is the 16e. If things were more open; what I really want to see is what we almost get to see with Kickstarter. If I could find one million people to do a first run who're willing to pay $750 for a first run edition, just to simply break even, and then make money off subsequent runs as demand does or does not exist.
> Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, NVIDIA, AMD, Marvell, Rockchip, Allwinner
Five of these are race-to-the-bottom business models. One is use-the-legal-system-to-retain-your-customers. The last two don't make cell phone class parts, and probably wouldn't be interested in the margins.
I mention this to make a point -- the quality of the A18 that you (reasonably) want in a smaller, niche-market phone isn't a coincidence, it's a consequence of the designer being able to justify the investment because it acts as a market differentiator. PASemi would never have been able to do that on its own, any more than MediaTek has -- customers have no brand faithfulness to cell phone processor manufacturers, so as long as the OEM can freely move between them the distinction must be on price, at the cost of performance. There are upsides to the more open market you imagine in your alternate history, but it would come with the downside of the high end of the market being less developed, and flat out worse, due to less segmentation being possible.