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You can give away smartphones for free, it wouldn't make much difference.
It's the damn carriers that are expensive, especially in Canada.

Here are the data-only plans from the three major carriers:
Rogers: $25/400MB
Bell: $30/500MB
Telus: $30/500MB

Yes, those are megabytes caps, in 2019. Not a typo.

Buy a 3UK SIM card and get 2 GB for £10 per month for use in Canada or 70 other countries (apologies, I don't know what the quid to loonie rate is and am too lazy to look it up but it wont be C$25).

You can give away smartphones for free, it wouldn't make much difference.
It's the damn carriers that are expensive, especially in Canada.

Here are the data-only plans from the three major carriers:
Rogers: $25/400MB
Bell: $30/500MB
Telus: $30/500MB

Yes, those are megabytes caps, in 2019. Not a typo.

Understand that this is an LTE connection, so cell prices apply for overages. I can't find the paper work right now but looking at https://www.telus.com/en/bc/mo... it says a 5 cents per MB overage fee, which works out to $50 per GB and I know my cell provider (Fido) just doubled their overage charges, luckily I don't have a data plan there. And I've seen a few headlines stating that all the big cell providers have upped there overage charges to a hundred per GB (perhaps just in BC). But I haven't tested it.
Hmm, it may have been this article that I saw the headline of, https://mobilesyrup.com/2018/0... which states that Rogers, including Fido boosted up their overages to 10 cents a MB, just like Bell and Virgin Mobile. Perhaps Telus hasn't upped theirs yet. Even 5 cents a MB is way too much

Most of the world is hardly impressed with Apple. Pretty much just the 5 eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States).

0. 57% Japan

Five Eyes:
1. 48% G.Britain
2. 46% Australia
3. 43% USA
4. 39% Canada
5. 31% New Zealand

Rest of the World:
5. 24% France
6. 24% EU5
7. 20% China
8. 20% Germany
9. 16% Italy
10. 13% Spain
...

Sources:

Apple regains top spot in New Zealand smartphone shipments
Apple tops Samsung in Canadian smartphone market share: comScore
iPhone market share grows 6.4% in USA, takes share from Android in most markets
iPhone market share by country

The iPhone doesn't have a majority market share in Canada. Android does. You must definitely be living under a rock.
http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/03...

Actually just had a bit of a b*tch session about this.
Android mobile devices are overall the most well selling, with 40% adoption (IOS follows at 35%).

That comes to roughly 9m users on wireless devices. I'm not sure what adding other media devices (tablets, tv-boxes, etc) would contribute, but there are those as well.

So I heard a song on the radio I liked, and tried to buy it online.

Google Play Music: Not available in Canada
Amazon Mp3: Not available in Canada
iTunes: Not available on platforms other than IOS/Windows/Mac

So for everyone who *wants* to pay for music.... what are the options? Sounds like a case of "shut up and take my money" to me.

1. That space is already well populated (e.g. Skype).

One data point isn't well populated :P

There's also Dell Voice and Google Voice might be coming soon, but I imagine that Facebook is piggybacking on Vonage Mobile to beat Google.

I think there's plenty of space in the market.

I don't see a problem with it the comparison. Age is not an excuse for a lack of reliability. In fact an older device should be more reliable because it's had a chance to go through major updates and bug fixes. If I was complaining about poor performance then yeah it would be a bad comparison; but that's not what I'm complaining about.

It looks like Google isn't getting any better at this stuff too.

In a nutshell many companies are twisting their minds all out of shape as to how best combine the smart phone, smart tablet and smart book into as cheap and easily connectible system as possible. How to cut corners in cost, and where best to stick that smart phone, to the tablet, to the keyboard and of course to the big screen TV (will the problems never end). Everyone knows they who do it best will be the next Apple, while Apple rots in the barrel with the rest. Motorola is conducting experiments, with which the arm all competitors in the Android market space.

For ease of use, tapping the devices together to let them sort it out remotely is the easiest but damn, you have to pay for all that hardware four time to do it. Twice is about the best you can hope for, you can hide the profit in the bug screen but eventually customers are going to wake up to how much they are getting screwed over when it comes to smart phones and charging them twice more is going to be a struggle. ASUS seems to temporarily be closest http://mobilesyrup.com/2012/02/28/asus-padfone-brings-phone-tablet-docking-station-and-stylus-to-ice-cream-sandwich/ but implementation is somewhat broken.

Likely reality those profit margins on smart phones especially on their way over priced components is going to start crashing pretty soon and a quick tap is most likely the easiest solution. Specialist phones type companies are screwed as the broad product range companies take over on a commoditised product.

Getting the cheap/free cellphone in Canada often involves signing up for long 3 year plan with huge penalties if you quit early.

I'm not sure of all the provinces, but I know that both Quebec and Manitoba have new laws in place requiring better contract disclosure and limiting those penalties.

• Manitoba's
• Quebec's

I suspect that Rogers and Telus are afraid the other provinces will enact the same or stronger legislation.

It's not just happening in the US. All the major carriers in Canada had initially denied having Carrier IQ on their phones (Rogers/Bell/Telus) but it has recently been found on the Rogers LG Phoenix.

http://mobilesyrup.com/2011/12/02/uh-oh-carrier-iq-found-on-the-rogers-lg-phoenix/

Samsung shifted nearly as many Galaxy S II's as Apple did iPhones last quarter, it was something like 16 million S II's vs. 17 million iPhone 4s. That's before you factor in Samsung's other offerings - Android and WP of course.

Er? I'm not sure where you got that information as Samsung just announced they have sold 30million Galaxy S phones total (S and S2 combined not each). The S2 has been available for 5 months and has sold 10 million with S making up the 20 million.

Apple doesn't want this story repeated in the tablet market too, it's hard enough for them to swallow in the phone market.

That premise relies on two things: (1)Your incorrect assertion above and that (2)Apple cares that they sell more smartphones than anyone else. I don't think Apple has really ever cared about having the most sales. They have always seemed concerned about having the best product first and making gads of money second. For instance, Apple might have 5% of the computer market but they are making tons of profit while other makers sell much more volume but make less profit.

Effectively Samsung could at any moment pull the rug out from under Apple - by not just producing a product that's succesful or at least almost so as the iPhone/iPad, but also by deciding to up their rates on production too leaving Apple more limited in it's ability to find a manufacturer for it's products.

Apple has already contracted TSMC to make the A5 which Samsung is the only supplier, the A5. You could say that the phone situation was the whole reason but TSMC offers a 28nm process whereas Samsung will move to a 32nm sometime in the next year. All other parts have multiple sources.

Really though what Apple should do if it wants out of this mess is not resort to suing, but to invest some of those many billions in cash it has lying around in pursuing it's own manufacturing base as a longer term strategy. . . Why pursue this route of a more stable manufacturing base if you can't be sure you're going to be able to produce products people want manufactured on such a scale forcing you to throw that investment down the drain?

Spending money on infrastructure when there is already a stable infrastructure in place? Take for instance, there are many companies that make flash memory. I would estimate that to get into the flash memory business would take 10 billion dollars just for Apple to make something which offers no advantage to their competitors and would cost more. Same thing for displays and plastics. That just doesn't make sense.

It's no coincidence that since Jobs mostly stepped down and Cook took over back in Feb that all we've seen is a half-arsed iPad update, a late and abysmal iPhone refresh, a pretty weak iOS update,

Everyone says that every time we get a new Apple product. The 3GS wasn't a huge improvement over the 3G. It still sold.

So one guy with a thousand fake names will get the entire run and sell them all off for $300-$400 a shot on eBay. Good, good, glad to see the system works.

Given that HP couldn't sell them at all until they dropped the price to $99... your scenario seems pretty unlikely.

I won't be surprised if someone tries to do it - but they're going to get stuck with a lot of inventory. The interest just isn't there.

What in god's name are you talking about? Do you even READ the internet?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/hp-touchpads-earning-ebay-sellers-around-150-percent-more-than-fire-sale-prices/56239
http://mobilesyrup.com/2011/08/26/humour-drawing-of-an-hp-touchpad-hits-ebay-bidding-now-over-80000/
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2103751/hp-touchpads-ebay

I mostly just follow Engadget as mentioned above and (since I'm Canadian) http://mobilesyrup.com/ which covers mobile news/releases releases in Canada.

Canada basically has only two wireless brands, owned by one company.

This is false. Bell, Rogers and Telus had very roughly a 1/3 of the market each (source). In major cities you have one or two more options (Dave and Wind).