You may think that the US is first in wireless technology, and I wish it were true, but you would be incorrect. The US has a big problem with land mass getting in the way of wide-scale rollouts.
S. Korea is currently number one in wireless and broadband technology. Their bandwidth speeds on every carrier outpace our best carriers here in the US, wireless or not (Google Fiber doesn't count because they don't cover a majority of any city they have entered yet). Western Europe would be 2nd place. Though they are tortured with usage caps, VAT & horrible utility-tax based pricing systems the EuroZone does have a marketplace which removes phones from the carriers control.
Here in the US we have carriers that have systematically removed features and choices from their customers. Those of us that have been technophiles the longest remember there used to be FM chips in most phones, removable storage and replaceable batteries. There were even stylus pens in the phones, IR transceivers and full sized applications that didn't require cloud computing. We had unlimited plans on every carrier, our privacy was respected, our lives were not mined for data and ads did not exist on our phones.
HTC was the darling company of so many of us ubergeeks. They used to listen to us. We wanted the latest hardware feature and they provided it on the next phone. We wanted to customize our experience and they let us. Then things took a dark turn. Carriers wanted to monetize every aspect of your cellular experience. No more FM radios, no more unlimited data, starting their own craptastic services and restricting usage of other products. HTC was among the first to comply. And their marketshare dropped to companies that held out a little longer. Next HTC though they could win on style over everything else. But in doing so they abandoned the people that had trusted them since the PPC-6600. No more replaceable battery, no removable storage and all the new features we wanted were passed over in favor of a camera. Instead of that camera and metal back, they should have kept the polycarbonate unibody and added wireless charging.
Now Samsung wants to take the same dire road. Apple tells their sheep what they want. HTC tried and got burned. Samsung wants to try it now, after years of saying they aren't Apple, and they will lose sales too.
The market is cooling. Every major market has reached capacity. Sales will go to those companies that remember only 5% of customers upgrade every year. Everyone else wants phones that will last. And a big part of making phones that last is making them as user friendly to maintain and upgrade. It is sad that the article tries to contrast phones & desktops, as that person too probably doesn't do enough homework to see that tablets are dying in favor of people wanting really computers again. This has spurred a stabilization in desktop sales and a hotter market in laptop/convertible PC sales.
HTC is dead until they get back into offering every possible feature again. Samsung is turning down the same road. Sony died long ago. LG has some hope, if they get into the 6" market. And even Moto is as risk after Google flipped them like a bad house.
Maybe a new champion of consumers, choice & longevity will step up from the shadows. Until then, watch for a lot more people to sit on the device they have because nothing new will offer the options and features of what they once had.
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