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Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

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Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#91

Post by seb1204 »

Zak wrote: post #37
distract8901 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're way, way too cheap and low-spec to even consider as a daily driver. I'd love to pay like $500 for a pinephone with hardware from 3-4 years ago.

As someone still daily driving a Pixel 4A, I'm curious as to what people need from their phones that hardware from 3 years ago can't provide. Newer phones have better cameras, but otherwise it seems like they just do the same things a little bit faster. The value argument is valid of course, but much like PCs, major phone manufacturers get a lot of their profit from bundling crapware so it's inevitable for one that d…

Aside from the camera which I use less and less I'm still happy with my OnePlus 7T from 2019 which I bought second hand. I did upgrade from a OnePlus 3T which I bought new in 2016.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#92

Post by tivert »

codeulike wrote: post #13

Are these like real brands, or fake cookie cutter brands on Amazon? Amazon: "We're talking top brands here, like FLORGOO, REMPLOW, BARBENTRON, ZOLIMIO" Customer: "Those really dont sound like real companies, Amazon" Amazon: "But they kindof do though, you can see how those might be company names" Customer: "I guess?" (from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQpxAvjD_30 )

> Amazon: "We're talking top brands here, like FLORGOO, REMPLOW, BARBENTRON, ZOLIMIO"

Barbentron is a quality brand. You know that because it has a pronounceable name and the "tron" has connotations of advanced technology.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#93

Post by GuB-42 »

stonogo wrote: post #62
chankstein38 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite one ever is still MOBDICK

The two past champions are "Fartpeach" products and "Dickass" brand car brakes. Both are gone -- the Fartpeach brand is retired entirely and Dickass changed their name ... to Dickase. Some remnants of the former remain, e.g. https://www.amazon.in/FartPeach-Professional-Mountain-Suspen...

Speaking of cars, being French, I can't believe Audi called their electric cars e-tron.

It literally means "turd".

I mean, it is French, the 5th most spoken language in the world, and France is Germany's neighbor. There is no way Audi could have missed that.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#94

Post by singleshot_ »

solardev wrote: post #74
vanchor3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those are at least "real names" though, which you can find some sort of significance behind. Either named after a place or person, or with some sort of meaning. Rather than names that seem to be randomly generated 5-7 character vaguely pronounceable names that aren't already in use.

Maybe if you look them up, but I bet the average person has no idea what Lenovo, Asus, Volvo, Nintendo, Samsung, and IKEA mean. Even more modern company names are kinda like that... Anker, DJI, Haier, Dalian Wanda, Kagi, Vercel, Nexon, Plex, Splunk, Zyxel, Sonos, Zynga, Hulu, Etsy, Yandex... Maybe if they just used a better random name generator with a better appreciation for English phonemes, we'd never know the dif…

Trademarks, in some ways, have stronger protections if they’re made up (I.e., “fanciful”). You’re going to have a challenging time protecting a trademark of a common word than a made up one.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#95

Post by makeitdouble »

mmanfrin wrote: post #57
makeitdouble wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not dealing with any trademark issue and other copyright stuff is probably worth the weirdness to them.

Has that ever really stopped them before though?

They'd get banned on the spot from any western store.

Imagine applying to Amazon US with a "General Electronics" brand of stoves. It wouldn't up them to decide if they get a listing or not on the site.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#96

Post by kilroy123 »

dustincoates wrote: post #83
sampa wrote: post #43

I miss HTC (yeah, they're not dead officially, yet). From making ODM PDAs/phones for Dell/Compaq/HP/Google to becoming one of the top smartphone makers and playing with VR/beats headphones and into oblivion. Hope somebody writes a book about them.

To this day, the G1/HTC Dream is my favorite phone I've ever had. Each phone since then has been more or less a utilitarian upgrade, but that one was just fun. I loved popping out the slide out keyboard with that satisfying click. (It could have also been a reflection of where I was in life. I was firmly in my fun years, moved cities twice, and met my wife with that phone. I wonder if there are going to be people in…

I, too, had the G1 from about the time it came out. It was a pretty cool phone.

For me, my all-time favorite was the Danger Hiptop II/SideKick II. No phone since then has ever been so much fun.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#97

Post by astrange »

mcphage wrote: post #86
fragmede wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names * In particular, check out numbers 5, 20, 29, 32-36, and very specifically, number 40, should interest you. (See 24-27 if you take umbrage at the applicability of the previous set of rules.) * https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

There are people without names. There are no cultures without names.

That's #8.

> 8. People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events.

Pirahã are an example, they change their names at whim and everyone else accepts this.

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#98

Post by TaylorAlexander »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #76
granshaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously why don’t these Chinese companies hire someone for 30mins to come up with a more reputable sounding name?

It's because in 2015, Amazon was opening up the marketplace to third-party vendors, but didn't want to take on the enormous job of quality control for those products. So they established the Amazon Brand Registry in an attempt to force the US Patent and Trademark Office to help them. They basically hoped that vendors would respond by going through the enormous effort to get a high-value trademark for something like a…

See also the NYTimes coverage of this: https://web.archive.org/web/20230203133645/https://www.nytim...

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#99

Post by SanjayMehta »

frandroid wrote: post #77
solardev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that different from Nokia, Nintendo, Siemens, Lenovo, Asus, Samsung, Ikea, Ferrari, Volvo, etc.? None of those sound reputable by themselves, they had to build up a reputation. Hell, I'd probably buy a Zolimo Barbertron just FOR the name!

Not to mention GOOGLE Back in 2000/1, I had such trouble taking them seriously, with that name and that colourful logo, I was like, whuuuut? But then I started using it and obviously it was miles ahead of everything else. That taught me a good lesson on whether you need a clever brand name or not. The product makes the brand name, not the other way around.

I had a colleague back then who used to chortle “go ogle” every time google was discussed. The debate would usually be Altavista vs Yahoo.

(These days he would probably get reported to HR.)

Re: Nearly 500 brands exited smartphone market during 2017-2023

#100

Post by fy20 »

dustincoates wrote: post #83
sampa wrote: post #43

I miss HTC (yeah, they're not dead officially, yet). From making ODM PDAs/phones for Dell/Compaq/HP/Google to becoming one of the top smartphone makers and playing with VR/beats headphones and into oblivion. Hope somebody writes a book about them.

To this day, the G1/HTC Dream is my favorite phone I've ever had. Each phone since then has been more or less a utilitarian upgrade, but that one was just fun. I loved popping out the slide out keyboard with that satisfying click. (It could have also been a reflection of where I was in life. I was firmly in my fun years, moved cities twice, and met my wife with that phone. I wonder if there are going to be people in…

I had a HTC Desire Z, and I believe there were a few more models with a full QWERTY keyboard after that. I found it pretty hard to type on (I had a Nokia E61 before which somehow seemed easier), yet more than once when on call I SSHed into production to resolve issues directly from the phone :D

Part of the issue then was touchscreens were still pretty bad in terms of accuracy and sensitivity, and screens were small, so if you wanted to type something fast you needed a physical keyboard. Today I feel like I could do the same with any 6" phone with the on-screen keyboard.

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