Morning t43562,
What you have written proves my point; even with the processers. They take an already existing ARM designed processor (e.g. the A8), get a company they bought to add a few bits on and call it the A5 and A5X. Then Apple get a company (Samsung) who have the facilities and experience to fab the A5 processor.
As for Nokia etc stopping development on new technology, they didn't. All they did was to delay the introduction of technology to the market, deliberately, to increase their profits for minimum investments. Apple came along and said "let's use all this stuff that others have developed, but haven't introduced to the market, and use it".
I generalise slightly, but hopefully you get the idea. Even with the latest iPhone 5 there is no great new technology, yet this phone is sellling phenomonally well, mainly because it does what it is designed to do well (except for maps).
Last edited by hval; 5th Oct 2012 at 06:39.