That phase of their plan is over with. I've been saying it for the last couple of years, but every move Samsung makes at this point is a reflection of Apple's lockdown on their products. They spent billions of dollars on R&D, listening to the consumers, and marketing their products globally. Now that they've acquired hundreds of millions of fans across the world, they can start forcing their grip on the consumer base. Their Tizen operating system is just around the corner, and you can bet it'll have the same stringent rules in place as iOS, to keep people from tinkering with it.
This whole thing is very red pill VS blue pill. The blue pill showcases a proprietary experience, wherein the company controls every aspect of how you use your device...right down to what power cords are available. The entire experience is streamlined, easy to use, requires very little decision making, and rewards the user by being so amiable. The red pill on the other hand, is most modern Android devices. The user has total control of the situation, and all of the risks that come with it. You can buy that charger that puts out more juice than your device needs, you can download that shady looking app and install it if you so choose.
But that's the price of freedom; the choice to do the wrong thing intentionally or not...and accepting the consequences for your actions.
Unfortunately you may be right in every aspect of your comments. I tend to be a cautious optimist rather than a doomsayer. Bad news or speculation, if later is discovered not to be completely true still causes damage to the reputation of the one who is newsworthy. IMHO, it's also counterproductive to the entire industry and may actually thwart further advances due to the concerns of backlash.
The real reason for the chips may be for the sole purpose of warding off true "knock-off" products manufactured overseas, in inferior manufacturing facilities, using child labor, or with employees being abused, with inferior parts, inferior engineering, and ultimately resulting in a potentially damaging product which is then sold here and other countries at only a slightly lower price than the OEM wholesale or retail prices, but at HUGE profits. I know that Chinese (and other), knock-offs which look, feel, smell and seem to operate the same as the true OEM product are flooding the market in the millions of unit counts, and with it are creating a back-flow of US (and other nations') capital, right back across the seas to the point of origin. In a sense, by doing nothing we're effectively and passively funding an oppressive military communist regime.
This is a huge problem across most industries and we're not even scratching the surface regarding just how big a problem it is. If Samsung and other manufacturers don't do their part to "secure the borders" of their products, they can't be as profitable, they put themselves at risk of bad publicity for failures that aren't even of their products, and they are also at potential liability for catastrophic failures of their products which may be entirely caused by the knock-off adapters as the case may be.
I for one, applaud any way that the manufacturers can assure me the product I am buying is in fact genuine. Microsoft does it with their hologram labels and 16 digit authentication codes, as well as with their back-end authentication processes, as does virtually every other software manufacturer. Bootlegging is a huge problem in the music and video industry as well and we all know what kind of financial impact it has had there. Sure, the complaints there were that the product hadn't changed with the needs of the market and the times (i.e. paying the price of an entire album for what amounts to 2 songs you like), and the cries of abuse by the artists in the press who claim they were only receiving a small part of the profits, and that the record producers and managers were taking the lion's share. I am not here to say which is right and which is wrong regarding RIAA, but bootlegging and knock-off products in any industry is theft. Geez, even high-end handbags costing hundreds of dollars, as well as shoes and sun glasses are being knocked-off at alarming rates and this is not getting any better. Why should cell phone hardware manufacturers have any less right to be able to protect themselves from the same kind of thievery as the software, recording and other industries are trying to do?
We're not far away from all products having nano-sized particles embedded in them which are completely undetectable, and yet with the right equipment can be quickly identified to prove (or disprove) authentic products. Diamonds are micro-etched with serial numbers for authenticity. I'm sure there are even other methods in development - some which may be even more covert. I say, bring them on.
