Almost 5 billion humans have smartphones - as a species wide achievement its utterly incredible. And yet there are two major manufacturers and not even ten with 100M plus handsets (apple, Samsung, xiaomi, oppo, vivo, huawei)

This is a strategic risk right up there with AI ans starlink - and while we don’t want it to stay this way, it’s even harder to imagine how to fix it.

we are descending into a balkanised world of trade wars and threats. Imagine huawei, or apple being told by their respective governments to turn off security services for phones in europe, for example.

It’s not just an AI arms race.

(My tentative solution is governments start to handout devices that provide NFC digital IDs and start growing from there… but that’s a long way from “as good as apple”