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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> I don't know about any EU smartphone brands outside of Fairphone.

That's your problem then, don't you think?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_phone_brands_by...

Now, whether all of these are actually manufactured locally or not is another matter, but the EU definitely is regulating its own market. As they have been empowered to do so.

I'm all for it. And I would love to see standardized battery packs for electric vehicles as well because I think that will be a much bigger issue in the longer term.

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> That's your problem then, don't you think?

No need to play the man or be belittling.

Point still stands that the EU smartphone market is so little that any regulation isn't hurting them. Regulation on car repairability definitely would, hence why you stil need to visit the BMW dealer if you want to change the 12-volt battery or activate your heated seats. The EU will not likely do anything about that.

It is their market to regulate.

And right to repair is very much a part of EU regulations. Without those regulations you'd be in a far worse situation.

https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/sectors/automotiv...

If BMW idiocy gets you upset: don't drive BMW. My car is 25 and I can do just about anything I want on it. Your beef is first and foremost with BMW, and I'm fairly sure that if the EU deems this kind of behavior anti competitive it will be smacked down, even if the participants are all EU based.

You seem to want regulation to be perfect, but in light of manufacturer abuses it's a catch-up game.

https://www.automotiveworld.com/articles/how-far-will-the-in...

Is a good article on the subject, it also helps to see that there is a fine line between what has to be made available and be subscription free and where manufacturers may have some leeway.

I agree with you that changing out a battery (which is a pretty common affair) should never require a trip to the stealer.

It is their market but they don't have any significant participation in it, which is why regulation is easy. There isn't any significant downside to it for them.

I don't have beef with BMW, that was just an example. "Don't drive a BMW" is the equivalent of "Don't buy an iPhone" if you care about repairability. It shouldn't be like that.

You see correlation and infer causation but maybe the better way to see this is to realize that the EU is large, has a ton of work on their plate already and relatively limited budget to work with whereas manufacturers will always just see how far they can stretch it.

The number of EU companies affected by EU regulations is far larger than the number of companies from abroad. Your example fails because the same amount of regulation that applies to EU car manufacturers also applies to manufacturers from abroad. The EU is in that sense one of the fairest players.

According to your philosophy no amount of regulation on mobile phones would be acceptable because the EU has no big name phone manufacturer any more. But as others have already pointed out this legislation affects far more than just mobile phones so your argument simply fails.

The EU has time to responds to Apple rumours so it appears they have time to crack down on BMW, Mercedes and many other EU brands that limit user repairability.

So, you want them to target BMW, Mercedes and other EU brands rather than to address all of the car manufacturers in the same way?

That's exactly the kind of thing they don't do, and for good reasons.

As you can see from the link posted above they do a lot to ensure right to repair, but it isn't perfect. Give it some time.

Consumers are the whole reason as to why any market exists. You can think about regulation as "You have to do this to sell here" but also as "They have to do that for you to buy it here". The EU comes in agreement as to what kind of products they ought to purchase and this is the result. Your wallet is not the only way to vote in modern capitalism.

The wp article does mention gigaset and https://www.shiftphones.com/ but not Fairphone nor https://www.carbonmobile.com/ who as with shift and gigaset are building manufacturing in Germany (mostly north east). Shift has a plant in China and just does finishing in Germany. But that's a given, I believe. Can't source all things in one country. Or?

If everything that sourced a component or subassembly from China would disappear the world would be a substantially different place.

Hmm I can see Fairphone on that Wikipedia article...

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