[robnado]

This works for Steam because the Steam Deck is a low margin device they sell to ensure they can’t be shut out of their profitable business of selling games by microsoft and apple. To Steam, having a customer use the same steam deck for 10 years is not a big loss of revenue and supports their business goals. Meanwhile, Samsung making repairs cheaper means they are cannibalising the sale of new devices which is their main source of profit and growth.

[dangus]

I disagree that Samsung’s main source of profit and growth for their smartphone business is the smartphones themselves, at least if we zoom out to the long term. Those are commoditized hardware devices. Each new generation of phone is less compelling than the current one because the product is essentially “done,” much like a microwave or toaster.

Samsung will make more money from you if they can sell you cloud services and other ecosystem stuff, just like Apple does with their platform.

Just look at how much revenue Apple’s services business brings in as a proportion of their business, at a much better margin than hardware sales.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re...

Services are rapidly growing as a proportion of Apple’s electronics business and I suspect that Samsung is similar if they’re playing their cards right.

There’s going to be a point where Samsung really doesn’t care if you have an old phone or not, as long as you are using Samsung services for your digital life.

[kroolik]

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