So, have you noticed that the new phone you purchased within the past year has already be eclipsed and is virtually obsolete already? This is a common theme running through the mobile smartphone industry today. Back when manufacturers had to produce everything that’s in a cell phone, from the CPU that ran it, to the interface it ran, the manufacturers controlled when the phones would go obsolete. Usually this was after a few years so they could make back what they spent investing in building the phones.
But now, Android has thrown itself into the market, a free, open source operating system that any manufacturer can afford. So now, these companies can concentrate their investments on marketing, advertising, and building quality phones. But wait, then we saw companies like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments start producing the processors for these new phones, and manufacturing got even easier for companies like Motorola, HTC, and Samsung. All they have to do is make the physical phone, implement their custom interface (of which, most are terrible), and market the phone. One would think all of these things would make it easier to sell phones to consumers, but with half of the processes gone that go into making a phone, these companies are churning out phones at break-neck speeds giving consumers a very wide range of phones to choose from.
We don’t expect things to slow down very much, we just wish we had more money to be able to buy all the great phones that keep getting produced!