There are smartphones designed in europe. Isn't Fairphone a dutch company? The greenphone was from Norway. Gigaset is German. The Shift smartphones too. Wiko is french and chinese.
Going off some website [0]; unless I've been badly mislead, effectively nobody in Europe wants them. Looks like Nokia is leading the pack of desirable phones with nearly 1 person in 100 (not really that good, but close enough) thinking it is the phone for them.
Or it would be if Nokia's mobile phone division hadn't been bought out by the Americans. So technically even that is a US brand these days. Seems fair to count that as European though, presumably they still have offices in the EU.
> Wiko is french and chinese.
Well they've solved half the problems that EU companies face.
Perhaps because Google and Apple have been acting as monopolies and made all other products undesirable? The US benefits from the EU greatly, but whenever the EU enforces laws to protect it's citizens you always hear people from the US complain about "socialist" whiners who can't compete with the US.
If the US had domestic laws that actually helped and protected it's citizenry, they'd probably look like the EU's laws.
Then the US wouldn't be involved in the smartphone market either, the EU and the US would both be trying to counter the overwhelming dominance of Asian smartphones.
If the US adopted the same regulations, they'd get the same outcome.
> If they put this sort of effort into inquiring how they mucked up their own companies then they might make some actual progress.
Here's the thing though, the point of an anti-trust investigation is that the market dominance might, possibly, be due to something other than people liking it.
I don't have a problem with the specific things Apple's getting criticised for in the Epic cases[0], but it's really unavoidably obvious that a lot of people do.
[0] And that's not as a fanboi: I do have a problem plenty of other things they do and fail to do, just not these specific things. E.g. Safari as the only browser engine was obviously going to bite them, even though the browser wars are much less important today than in the 90s.
Are you suggesting that Apple aren't the people in charge of iPhones? You might like to pass that on to the EU, they're worried about iPhones and they appear to have accidentally decided that probing Apple will help!
I'm sure the EU is trying to regulate how China manufactures iPhones too, if that is some sort of consolation prize to you. And my response is the same - there is a reason it is happening in China. The reason is EU regulations.
> ...market dominance might, possibly, be due to something other than people liking it.
Case in point; the market dominanace of Apple in Europe is primarily because EU regulators are technophobic. North America can manage to design a smartphone. Asia can design smartphones in plural. Europe can manage the Nokia 1100 which is not nothing. Well done Europe. But not enough to compete with serious players.
They can however design an instruction set integral to the development of the iPhone and garner Apple's continued investment in their success as a result.
> There is a reason that they are probing a US company - the European continent isn't capable of producing a smartphone that people want.
I don't believe it. I mean yes, we can't compete with designing a smartphone, but I don't think that is the reason the EU is looking into US tech companies.
Yeah it would have happened regardless. US Americans think it wouldn't because they think politics necessates lobbyism and expect that if a European company were in a similar position to Apple then obviously the EU would be lobbied by them to let them keep pillaging.
This article and related discussion might be relevant. It addresses more or less exactly this sentiment:
> This is the reason why I get a bit frustrated whenever I see somebody in tech dismisses the EU as just trying to protect European companies from competition with their glorious and wonderful US companies.
The EU has taken a human rights stance with zero consideration how to compete on the global markets. Of course money never sleeps and this'll eventually move most EU-based properties in the hands of foreign investors. Perhaps this is the intent all along
