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South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

wired.co.uk

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Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#101

Post by brazzy »

digitalengineer wrote: post #90
brazzy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no sense at all. If anything, the makers of Windows Phones would have more incentive to add crapware in order to offset to license costs without having to raise the price. And iOS doesn't even have a price tag.

I'll explain: The cheap Android phones do this to earn a few bucks from the provider and/or crapware providers. The audience interested in cheap Android phones is less educated than people paying a premium for their phones. People pay a premium to get a good phone with a good experience. Crapware will kill marketshare. If Windows Phone added crapware they'd be dead in the water. I can't see them doing this, there is…

No. The providers want to have the crapware and simply won't subsidize a phone without it, which means that phone does not sell. Apple is able to prevent that only because their brand is stronger than the providers'.

The audience interested in cheap Android phones is more educated (or more price sensitive) than people paying a premium for a status symbol.

> If Windows Phone added crapware they'd be dead in the water. I can't see them doing this, there is too much competition in the market.

Funny then that they have always done just that: http://forums.wpcentral.com/nokia-lumia-521/229156-bloatware...

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#102

Post by digitalengineer »

brazzy wrote: post #101
digitalengineer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll explain: The cheap Android phones do this to earn a few bucks from the provider and/or crapware providers. The audience interested in cheap Android phones is less educated than people paying a premium for their phones. People pay a premium to get a good phone with a good experience. Crapware will kill marketshare. If Windows Phone added crapware they'd be dead in the water. I can't see them doing this, there is…

No. The providers want to have the crapware and simply won't subsidize a phone without it, which means that phone does not sell. Apple is able to prevent that only because their brand is stronger than the providers'. The audience interested in cheap Android phones is more educated (or more price sensitive) than people paying a premium for a status symbol. > If Windows Phone added crapware they'd be dead in the water.…

Thanks for the reply. Windows Phone indeed has apps you can't remove, just like Apple they're mosty standard aps and ringtones. From your link: "You can't uninstall any of the core operating system apps from Microsoft. I just helped my neighbor clear out all the bloatware from the carrier. And you are correct that you can NOT remove any of the pre-installed ringtones. Why, I have no clue, but it is, what it is. It's just not this phone, but all the WP8 devices you can not remove the existing ringtones. If you add ringtones, you can remove those. " So, you can remove the carrier-app-crap. Unlike most cheap android phones.

With regards to Android consumers: Android Is Popular Because It's Cheap, Not Because It's Good http://gizmodo.com/5977625/android-is-popular-because-its-ch...

The last study conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project shows that Android is the chosen smartphone of people without money. Among respondents, 22-percent of those with annual incomes below $30,000 were Android owners, as opposed to just 12 percent for iPhone. With those towards the lower-middle class, the trend holds: Android owns 23-percent of incomes up to $50,000, with iPhones at 18. The data makes it clear: the less money you have, the more likely you are to opt for an Android phone over something more expensive.

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#103

Post by icebraining »

RivieraKid wrote: post #100
icebraining wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that the US mobile market may be less competitive because of other regulations? Who assigns spectrum and shuts down unlicensed providers?

Yes, that's certainly possible. My position is that zero regulation is often not the optimal amount of regulation.

Regulation is an ill-defined concept, so that statement is meaningless to me. If you mean the same as when people usually call "unregulated", which actually means heavily but baldy regulated, then we're in agreement.

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#105

Post by tn13 »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #70
rtpg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is an unsourced data point, but I remember reading (on multiple ocasions) that OEM installs can cost something from 10 cents to a dollar. So even at the high end, you're maybe saving 10 to 15 dollars...

And is this actually realised as a savings to the consumer? I'd imagine it works more like selling advertising space. The bloatware is another source of revenue. Not a means to lower prices. If they were really concerned about maximising consumer value, they wouldn't keep picking dumb prices that end in '9.99'.

Prices are mostly determined by the competition and not by the seller. Say Sony manufactures a laptop at $100 and Lenovo at $102.

If Lenovo has to be competition they have to somehow shove off that additional $2 required to make themselves on par with Sony.

So every penny counts.

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#106

Post by tn13 »

joosters wrote: post #13
tn13 wrote: post #12

This unwarranted government intervention is not good though I hate the bloatware. Everytime I visit my parents I end up spending half an hour removing browser toolbars, make your PC fast software. So I bought them a brand new Lenovo laptop just to find that there were 22 different kind of bloatware from DNS related stuff to browser toolbars to some weird webcam and what not software. No matter how much I hate them, t…

How much money do you reckon they saved on the laptop? How much is your time worth?

My friends tell me they earn anywhere between $1-$25 depending on many factors. Ignore the techies. Normal people search on internet to find the cheapest laptop they want. People spend hours and days to save $15 on a laptop. They do not understand the difference between Computer with bloatware and Computer without bloatware.

I have met many people who talk about "Ask Menu" on internet explorer and come to think that it is a part of IE.

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#107

Post by tn13 »

aluhut wrote: post #23
tn13 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free market does not mean death to bloatware, quite the contrary. One of the reason why we have bloatware is because a significant amount of population does not really care about it and even if they do they prefer bloatware over an expensive laptop. The bloatware helps vendors reduced the prices of their devices by $10 - $20 making it more competitive.

Strange there are some phones who are cheap and don't have bloatware or less bloatware. How is this even possible with your theory? I'm sorry but I don't buy that marketing propaganda anymore. I am also sure if you could give a customer the choice between a bloatware loaded phone and a clean phone (where he can install more games etc.) he would chose the one with no bloatware. He just has no idea there are ways to ge…

"I am from government and we are here to help" - that sentence is mostly false and creates more problems than any help.

Bloatware is not the only way companies make phones cheaper. A company like Google can sell Nexus at cheaper rate than say Samsung Galaxy because the whole Android OS is like a Google Adware. For every search that you make on Google Nexus every day Google is probably making $10-$100 per thousand search queries. Google probably can afford to give away Nexus for free. Samsung however has no other way to monetize the phone after they have already sold it.

"I am also sure if you could give a customer the choice between a bloatware loaded phone and a clean phone."

I am all for it. Give consumer the choice. Do not ask government to interfere with it. Market is already sensitive to this. Microsoft has come up with MS signature brands. Sooner or later phone companies will have to follow.

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#108

Post by tn13 »

joosters wrote: post #27
cmaggard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that parent should be charging his or her parents for the work, or that he or she should cover the difference out of pocket?

I was implying that the money saved on the laptop is pretty small, so this 'benefit' to laptop owners is pretty insignificant and totally outweighed by the extra hassle or loss in performance / reliability of the computer. And I'd recommend to anyone doing tech support for parents that they carefully guide them into purchasing a decent, maintainable machine. It's not up to me to tell OP how that gets paid for. (I've…

Your observation is true for techies but not the general population. Understand that if there was no benefit to putting bloatware no company would have spent their resources on it. For me the benefit of saving $20 is small but not for many people out there. I know many people who think Macbooks are just white colored laptops.

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#109

Post by tn13 »

RivieraKid wrote: post #33

I'm surprised that so many people believe in the free market ideology (e.g. market regulation is always wrong). The error in this type of reasoning is very simple. They first assume an idealized market model and then derive conclusions from it – but the idealized market is just too different from real-world markets. It's really that simple but many really smart people fall for it.

That statement is true for every industry not just laptops. Generally, government intervention to give "choice" is far better than something that bans a product outright.

With this kind of regulation people will now get into the technicalities of what constitutes a "bloatware" and will spend countless hours in legal battles.

Re: South Korea bans unremovable mobile bloatware

#110

Post by aluhut »

tn13 wrote: post #107
aluhut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange there are some phones who are cheap and don't have bloatware or less bloatware. How is this even possible with your theory? I'm sorry but I don't buy that marketing propaganda anymore. I am also sure if you could give a customer the choice between a bloatware loaded phone and a clean phone (where he can install more games etc.) he would chose the one with no bloatware. He just has no idea there are ways to ge…

"I am from government and we are here to help" - that sentence is mostly false and creates more problems than any help. Bloatware is not the only way companies make phones cheaper. A company like Google can sell Nexus at cheaper rate than say Samsung Galaxy because the whole Android OS is like a Google Adware. For every search that you make on Google Nexus every day Google is probably making $10-$100 per thousand sea…

Yes recently we've (again) learned how a free market helps us all irony off.

How come you are generalizing your criticism against all kind of government involvement? It's simply not true that all kind of involvement automatically creates more problems. Why don't you simply explain how it would create more problems in this case?

I was also not talking about Google vs. Samsung. I was talking about cheap "no name" phones available in some countries vs. brand products. Products which are selling on a price where only the production costs + simple profit margin matter (old school market if you wish). Not the show that Apple or Samsung are playing where the high price makes the product artificially more "valuable". This behavior is breaking your simple illusion of a market where we all profit and the competition and other simple market mechanisms are balancing the market in a healthy way. (I doubt that this illusion has ever been true...)

As I've said: the customer has no choice here. He can't get rid of the stuff. There is no choice. Today you pay sick amounts of money for a shiny phone that still has all that bloatware. Thats why we need an external force to give the power back to the customers. And the only force able to do that is the government.

Market is not sensitive at all. If it would be, we wouldn't need a regulation. MS will play the same game as soon as they become a relevant player on the market because the method above works and they just want to make more money.

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