Posted on 09/02/2015 1:21:02 PM PDT by Swordmaker
I hate to break this to you, but FoxConn and Pegatron, Apple's main assemblers are both Taiwanese owned companies. FoxConn is also the main manufacturer and assembler for HTC and a secondary assembler for Samsung. Samsung makes some of the parts for Apple. . . and many of the iPhone parts are made in the United States, while none of the parts of the HTC or Samsung devices are. Here is a list of the 52 largest of FoxConn's 500 or so contract customers:
- Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
- Alcatel (France)
- Amazon (United States)
- Apple Inc. (United States)
- Archos (France)
- ASRock (Taiwan)
- Asus (Taiwan)
- Barnes & Noble (United States)
- BenQ (South Korea)
- Blackberry (Canada)
- Cisco (United States)
- Dell Inc.(United States)
- EVGA Corporation (United States)
- Fujitsu (Japan)
- GE Thomson
- Google (United States)
- Griffin Technologies (United States)
- Gründig Mobile (Germany)
- Hewlett-Packard (United States)
- HTC (Taiwan)
- Huawei (China)
- Intel (United States)
- IBM (United States)
- Kyocera Communications (Japan)
- Lenovo (China)
- Lenovo/Motorola Mobility (China)
- LG Lucky GoldStar (South Korea)
- Microsoft (United States)
- Microsoft MSI (Taiwan)
- Motorola Communications (United States)
- NCR (United States)
- NEC Casio Communication (Japan)
- Netgear (United States)
- Nintendo (Japan)
- Nokia Oyj (Finland)
- PackardBell (Netherlands)
- Panasonic (Japan)
- Philips (Netherlands)
- Pioneer Electronics (Japan)
- Samsung (South Korea)
- Sanyo (Japan)
- Sharp (Japan)
- Siemens (Germany)
- Sony (Japan)
- TCL Communication Technology (China)
- Telefunken (Germany)
- Thomson (France)
- Toshiba (Japan)
- Vizio (United States)
- Xiaomi (China)
- Zoostorm (New Zealand)
- ZTE (China)
Yup, your HTC and Samsung phones are most likely made by the same company that assembles Apple's iPhone and iPads, just not with as many parts made in the USA, nor are they designed in the USA, or owned by a USA company, on equipment owned by a USA company, nor are the profits from their sales taxed by the United States Government (Apple paid more US Corporate income tax than any other US business in 2012, paying $1 out of every $40 of US Corporate Income Tax collected that year!). Of course, I guess that's OK, you're Canadian. . . but Apple uses some parts made in Canada too.
Did you notice BLACKBERRY on that list?
I admit - the reasons I switched to Android are becoming less and less valid as Android keeps becoming a more closed system. I might switch back to the iPhone when upgrade time comes again.
Even your chart doesn’t tell the whole story: Those Android named releases are the base version of the Google OS and don’t take into account the “value-added” specific distributed releases pushed out by the major service carriers to their subscribers. This adds another level of complexity: Your Android version is the base Google release PLUS the phone manufacturer release PLUS your specific carrier version. But the time it gets to the end user, you’re running a two year old Android version unless you buy brand new on release day at your local phone store — and for the reason below that version will pretty much be the only version you ever have on your Android phone.
You can’t just load the new Android OS onto your Sprint/AT&T/Verizon/BellSouth Android phone without jail breaking it, and the cell service providers have vested interest in never giving you the next major release when they’re trying to unload their inventory of new phones running the latest Android OS. When I was an Android user with a Samsung Galaxy IIs phone, it took Sprint PCS a year to finally release a version of Froyo tailored for Sprint with their crappy bloatware that was more than a year out of date once it finally came via OTA upgrade. Then they ultimately had to roll it back because it radically shortened battery life thanks to a hideous memory leak that kept background apps running at 100% activity. Just awful. Sprint PCS responded with “Why not use this chance to come in and buy the new Galaxy III and renew your two year contract?”. I looked at what the “brand new” Galaxy III was running and it was a version of Android that came out in Spring of the previous year.
That was when I switched to iOS. Never looked back.
The phone I had, had just 1 upgrade ever!! It was an absolute nightmare to do the upgrade then. I was looking at the apps available and a good number of them didn't work with my phone.
After 2 years I dumped it for a different phone.
Wow.
I just looked and found that most Android users — according to Swordmakers chart — are running a version of the OS that came out 22 months ago (JellyBean 4.3) at the latest, if not far older.
Gosh sakes. Everyone who’s handed me their Android phone to see if I can take a look and help them VPN to our network or connect to our corporate email system always has a fairly new whiz bang Android phone but is running a pretty old version of Android OS.
Last fall, we had to rule out some older versions of Android from our network because of the SSLv3 (’POODLE’) vulnerability with ‘Bring Your Own Device’ because those old versions couldn’t be made compliant with our security model unless they could upgrade. It was like 70% of Android users in our enterprise were restricted from connecting their Android device inside our network sphere. iPhone/iPad users unaffected. Shortly thereafter, corporate gave a bunch of affected users new Android phones...
I think I know what's bugging you, and I can see why Apple products inflame you when you have so much you'd rather forget.
Maybe ignore the Apple threads, and the inflammation (or the shame) will go away.
Oh, I agree. Consider these fairly current charts from OpenSource:
Compare that last one with this:
Well, ya gotta admit, Android fragmentation is nothing if not colorful.
Well put...
And all the excitement of a roller-coaster ride. . .
More complicated than most of us realize. Good to know that some of it is US made.
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