Comment by Arainach
2 months ago
Consumers, when faced with a $100 Microwave that will last 2 years and a $130 microwave that will last ten, will buy the cheaper one nearly always. They don't care.
Consumers, when faced with a phone that offers "privacy" but that doesn't work with their banking app or their favorite game, will return it and get the non-privacy phone essentially every time.
Microwaves are a bad example. The cheaper ones are white labels basically all made in the same factory in China. The customer has no way to know if the slightly more expensive one is actually more durable or, much more likely, just the same, but generates more profit for the intermediaries. In this situation it is wiser to get the cheaper one.
Consumers have no way to tell that a phone gives "privacy" or even to understand the implications of that to their life. They have a significantly easier time understanding an error message that says "because your device has an unlocked bootloader, you can't use the <name of bank> app"
> Consumers have no way to tell that a phone gives "privacy" or even to understand the implications of that to their life.
This is the sort of thing anyone can look up on the internet before buying one.
The reason that doesn't work for white label microwaves is that the manufacturers don't want it to. The off brands exist so they can make sales to people who prioritize price, and they purposely change the company name every month so no one can find a review of the off brand and the same company can sell the same microwave with a higher margin to other people who will pay more for the name brand.
Whereas when your company makes a phone with better privacy etc., you want everybody to know that so they buy your phone instead of a competitor's.
> They have a significantly easier time understanding an error message that says "because your device has an unlocked bootloader, you can't use the <name of bank> app"
Indeed, it immediately lets them know that their bank sucks and they need a better one. (It's actually a pretty decent red flag that your bank has a cargo cult security team.)
4 replies →
Many consumers, is not all consumers. This play doesn’t need to swing everyone it just needs to be the preferred option for a commercially sized niche. People who care about security, in these times, is surely a growing demographic and fairly stable once folks value this first. Its sticky clients who won’t easily leave if this stays best in class as “most secure”.
Roughly 10% of buyers across most products and services will seek to buy “the best”. For those where the best is defined as “the best security”, Motorola (running GrapheneOS) has the opportunity to take these customers off of Apple. Not to say everyone is looking for a “more secure phone” but positioning that can seek to gain 5-10% of the mobile phone market, for a player who hasn’t had significant market share since the pre-iPhone 1990’s, looks like a no brainer, from Motorola’s perspective.
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