[sdiy] OT: Cell Phones Becoming Profitless

[Scott Gravenhorst]

Sorry for the non-DIY content, but this made me smile wryly this morning. 
Anything to thwart the proliferation of damnable cellphones is a very good
thing IMHO.

This tidbit comes from: http://slashdot.org/

I wonder...  If cellphone manufacture becomes a thing of the past, what
then?  Will the semi mfgrs tool up for more OTAs and tranny arrays?  Or
will we get a sh!tpile of crappy ringtone synths (without even MIDI!) until
we vomit?

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Cell Phones Becoming Profitless
Communications
Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday July 29, @09:49PM
from the imploding-markets dept.
saccade.com writes "EE Times has a fascinating article on how electronics
companies are being sucked into a profitless spiral by the cell phone
market. More and more of the small consumer gadgets are being folded into
the phone: camera, music player, PDA, GPS, etc. So the market for non-phone
gadgets is slowly going away as the phone picks up more functions. However,
consumers don't buy most phones; they are given away (or sold very cheap)
by the service providers as hooks to get people to sign up for mobile
service. So the service providers are demanding (and getting) rock-bottom
prices for fancy phones they can give away, and the micro chip companies
are forced into brutal competition for a market that is shrinking into a
single commodity gadget, the phone."

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