Paraphrasing Michael Brooks, "how are you going to win?" With this in mind, I've had a few dramatic changes of heart - my approach to my dear convergence now accepts a deal with the devil! Don't worry, I'm still a GNU lover - but there is a very calculated way we can break Linux stuff into the open market, in a meaningful way, by exploiting current market dynamics. I've had a big re-think of several things!
It's pretty indisputable that Apple is "king of the hill" right now, but we should examine why. It's primarily device interoperability - you have an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, iWatch, Air Pods, all that jazz - all of it. All of it integrates super great. I'm unclear what the competition is actually trying to do to defeat... but there is an obvious path... convergence. One phone that doesn't "do it all" in the sense you might think. Instead, it can integrate with myriad hardware - keyboards, monitor, even a car - to make any device a "smart" device. Your phone can become a "desktop computer", etc etc. Given the current non-Apple phone market's strategy (simply "make better phones"), the strategy of convergence also makes sense. You can't defeat the walled garden with a better phone, but if you don't even have a walled garden (just a SINGLE device), making a better phone is a powerful market strategy.
Again, the main reason people use Apple stuff is because everything integrates well. Yeah yeah, cultural gravity, sleek this, stylish that, but the main thing going for Apple is the device integration. An Android and an iPhone are about as good as each other for nearly everything. The difference is, it's extremely seamless to integrate an iPhone with a Macbook, and not-so seamless to integrate an Android with... some other computer. This nods to the philosophy of the walled garden, and Google + friends (and Microsoft + friends before) have tried to fight Apple with an "open garden" approach. The problem is, well, it's just kind of impossible to match what Apple does as well, due to the nature of their hardware-software chimera. So how can you challenge the king of the hill on the open market (and not just by selling cheaper stuff, but on an actual qualitative level)? Convergence - if all of your storage is local to a single device (files, pictures, projects, etc), you don't need to worry about syncing.
Yet from the Android side of the aisle, we see companies' strategy for challenging Apple to be pretty stupid: they just make better phones, but they just focus on the phone being a phone, and having a few gimmicky features. Samsung has done the best (maybe also Google? idk) to challenge the Apple walled garden with brute force - the samsung buds, samsung smart watch, and so on. But honestly they arent' keeping up. And wait, what are they good at? Making really good phones. Is there an overarching strategy which would (A) allow Samsung to challenge Apple's market dominance and (B) allow them to keep doing what they already do - make cool phones? There is - it's convergence. Samusng, interestingly, also seems to be somewhat timidly approaching convergence. But they haven't gone all of the way, at their own peril.*** Such a strategy would entail full-throated commitment (in marketing/advertisement) to the convergence as a central feature. Right now, what convergence is available (and as far as I can tell, it's not QUITE at the level of replacing the need for a laptop) is known to only a few enthusiasts - most people have no idea!! I'm left wondering why doesn't Samsung (A) commit to a powerful convergent device and (B) let it rip in their advertising???
Here is the idea: for most Westerners (maybe most people worldwide? I'm not sure), having a phone is common. It's a core technology - it's capable of doing nearly anything (it's weaker on heavy computation... but that's not a large enough market to be concerned about rn). Now what if you want a computer? Well, right now you would go buy a laptop. But (as you can do on some Android phones currently) what if you just plugged your phone into a monitor, and linked it with a keyboard? Boom, you have a laptop replacement. What if you want to watch TV (Netflix, Hulu, etc.)? Just plug in the phone to the TV. Drive a car? It's within possibility your car could have an interface that you connect to with your phone, and your phone does the UI "smart" part (ie maps, music, etc) (it may be wise to keep the actual processor as part of the car itself, but idk).
This is all already possible right now, but this possibility hasn't been fully marketed yet. But unlike many things that would help about the GNU/Linux world, it's possible to ride the wave of market dynamics for the good of GNU/Linux. Android is, to be frank, pretty unpopular in the United States (the walled garden problem) - but it has HUGE potential. Google has a vested interest in having a larger market share in tech, because well, obviously. How can Google compete with Apple? They should go the convergence route.
Now you might say "Why would Google do this, wouldn't this undermine their chromebook market?". Well kind of yes, but the thing is, they are far less invested in the "garden/ecosystem" vision of tech than Apple is - by undermining that model with the convergence model, they have a lot to gain in the market (and also, it opens up a whole new market - hardware that interfaces with the phone). I'll come back to the chromebook thing in a minute. Chromebooks are kind of neat, and they COULD have some potential in the lower end of the market, but I'm skeptical of how strongly they'll be able to challenge Apple. Chromebooks are more a nail-in-the-coffin for Microsoft, and Google could take over the low-end of the market just as handily with convergent phones (C Phones) as they could with Chromebooks.
Next is the glaring issue of the tablet market - Android generally sucks at tablet stuff, whereas Apple is very good at it. However, looking at the Samsung Z Fold 3, I see huge potential (although currently probably not a good daily driver) - it's both a phone, and a mini tablet! If Samsung + Google made a "C Fold" (for convergence Fold lol), the device itself could play the role of phone, tablet, computer, TV, and possibly a smart car.
You might say "what if you have a C Phone already, and don't want to buy a whole new phone to get tablet functionality?" Here is the glorious part - you can just buy a Wacom tablet! This allows you much of the functionality of a tablet (maybe not QUITE as convenient, but pretty close), and again, just hook it into your current C Phone! BEAUTIFUL!
See, the beauty is, you can extend the functionality of a base device with additional hardware. This also leads to two principles I'm a big fan of (and two things about Apple I'm not a fan of): repairability and modularity. The ability to swap in and out new/old parts in your setup, and to fix what you already have. Take three scenarios. (1) Imagine you have a laptop, and you don't like your keyboard - TOO BAD! But now imagine you have a C Phone, and you use it with PC functionality. You don't like your keyboard... so you just buy a new keyboard for like, idk, $30 bucks (or $300+, if you are a mechanical keyboard enthusiast lol). (2) Your laptop screen isn't cutting it for you anymore - the quality isn't there, or maybe it's not bright enough, or maybe you prefer a more matte screen to your current gloss screen (or vice versa). Well since you have a laptop, you're sh*t out of luck (or you spend $1000+ for a laptop upgrade). But with a C Phone, you can just buy a new monitor (maybe $100-$200) - so convenient, so cheap (relatively speaking)! (3) All of these scenarios so far could assume that ALL of the hardware isn't repairable at all. But if the hardware is repairable, imagine being able to swap out an old battery for a new one on the fly! In the age of 2021, it's possible to have a device like this that is virtually as thin as any other phone. So don't listen to those anti-repair lies!
I hope you see how convenient this all is. Now let's come to the cost aspect. Imagine you are a Mac person - you might shell out $1200 for a phone, $2000 for a macbook, ~$1000 for an iPad, and maybe $500-$1000 for miscellaneous other things (the watch, airbuds, the tag thing, etc). That's around $5000 spent on tech stuff!! Imagine you are not an Apple person - maybe you spend about $2500-$4000 on tech (it's possible to spend less than $1000, but that's with very very bad hardware, and you'll be shopping again within the year). Now imagine you have a C Phone - say it costs $600 (even a $300 phone would provide the necessary functionality) - then you buy earphones ($50-$150), keyboard (~$50), a monitor ($100-$200). This puts you at around $900 max!! And this is with a $600 phone, which is not bad! (If you had a $1000 budget TODAY, without a C Phone available, and you also wanted a laptop, you're probably gonna either have a really sh*t laptop, a really sh*t phone, or more likely, sh*t both). So you can save an as*load of money. Of course, you can buy a super expensive phone too - the main cost in your tech budget though is now JUST a phone.
Now why would Google and Samsung and friends want to get involved? Aren't we killing whole markets they could profit in? We are, but the thing is (1) the "high end" of these markets already has a huge fraction which isn't available to the non-Apple vendors, and (2) we aren't killing the tech market itself, we're re-inventing it - phones will still be available, and whole new markets for inter-operable gadgets will pop up. And let's be honest - people who buy the miscellaneous tech doo-dads produced by the likes of Samsung and LG and all them - they'll keep buying those doo-dads! Furthermore, I place big focus on Samsung and Google, because their investment in selling laptops is, as far as I can tell, pretty low (you might have a harder time convincing Lenovo/Motorola to follow this path). Plus, Samsung androids, as far as I'm aware, have the best support for this sort of convergence - it just needs to be pushed further to the fullest of its potential to finally crack open the market.
Now where does GNU/Linux come in here??? There's two reasons Linux phones aren't big right now - (1) they aren't really usable, (2) for Linux phone developers, there is little space left in the market for them (and the savviest Linux phone companies have identified the C Phone as such a space), and (3) Linux phones are probably going to have a hard time inter-operating with the other gadgets and doo-dads out there. But in a tech world where these gadgets and doo-dads take a back seat, in a world where "dumb hardware" (like a keyboard) is a primary accessory, suddenly the market is wide open. Suddenly switching from Android to Ubuntu Touch is actually really easy - as long as your Ubuntu Touch phone can connect with a monitor, keyboard, etc (which Linux has been able to do forever), then the switch is pretty painless. Furthermore, because this reduces the need for cloud services (having all of your files on a single device means a shared cloud between devices isn't really a necessity anymore), it means that Linux devices have another functionality not to worry about. While you can connect a Linux phone to various cloud services, obviously an Android is easier connected to the Google cloud, and an iPhone better connected to iCloud - so currently Linux phones have a disadvantage there. This disadvantage is no longer fundamental with a convergent phone - since everything is local, going to a new phone doesn't cause any issues of integrating in your "tech ecosystem" because there isn't really an to worry about. At worst, you have a smart watch which doesn't integrate perfectly with your Ubuntu Touch... this is a very small price to pay, and probably it will work anyways.
Will Google + Samsung take the path here? I believe they have good reason to. The American market is, as far as I can tell, increasingly Apple - I remember seeing at one point that American teenagers favor Apple to Android around 90 to 10!!! If the non-Apple coalition (lol) can crack the market open, I think they would be willing to - even if they have to share it with us Linux barbarians.
*** Why are companies timid about approaching convergence? I think it is Microsoft's failure with Microsoft continuum back around 2014-2015. But that failed because Microsoft Windows is itself terrible. It's not built for ARM chips in the same way Unix/Linux-based OSs are (like Android). So I don't think there is any reason to think that this project could fail in the same catastrophic way. Plus, the Android environment is much more mature than Microsoft's mobile adventure was - more apps, more experience, etc. People switching to a Samsung Android C Phone would have to make virtually no compromises in what software they could use, nor in the quality of the software they use. This was NOT the case with Microsoft continuum (and Microsoft Windows is still malware, even on x86 architecture! :P)