He says "Build quality is terrible even by Samsungs low standards." I assume that since this is a review on an Android site he sees a fair number of these. Thought it was interesting, I'm not into Android so I can't gauge how that community actually feels about Samsung products but clearly some are less than enthusiastic. And of course I love the glass and aluminum thing so anything plastic (and I do own that kind of gadget) feels cheap and creaky so it speaks to my biases.

Possibly. In the end it's all just speculation. Could be just a marketing push that was scheduled to precede the expected new iPhone launch for example. We'll not know until some time has passed and we get quarterly figures (and even then.)

Truly an example of the intelligent and discerning Android customer.

(OK I admit it, this one is little troll-ish but come on.)

Samsung ... the underdog ? This is a mega conglomerate that had a revenue of $247.5 billion in 2011 compared to Apple's $108.249 billion

When a recent review for a Samsung tablet by an Android site says something like this I doubt it :

"The build quality. Terrible even by Samsung's low standards. The back is actually squishy, and you can feel it deform while holding it. It's noisy too, the plastic creaks, groans, and grinds when you pick it up. Regular, strong plastic would still be unacceptable when everyone else uses aluminum, but this... this is insulting for a $500 tablet"

ALL these numbers are suspect including the ones cited by Forbes. These "tech analysts" are notoriously unreliable, and you can find one willing to support any argument you want to make.

Marketwatch sees a completely different phenomenon :

"While many experts predict Apple Inc.’s court victory over Samsung could shake up the wireless industry over the long term, it’s already having an impact on one key area: the resale market.

Since the $1.05 billion verdict Friday — which found that Samsung infringed on six Apple AAPL -1.04% patents — customers of Samsung have been dumping their Android products on at least one major resale site. Gazelle.com reports a 50% increase in Samsung smartphones over the past three days, which has led to a 10% drop in prices for those devices"

It's a planned economy coupled with cargo cult economics ("if you build it they will come".)

It also has a GDP nearly that of the UK, despite having 25 million less inhabitants. To compare, the UK is £1,278.2 billion in debt with an unemployment rate of 8%. Tech is also a growth industry which the UK needs since it is now too dependent on financial services, a sector that hasn't been doing especially well. That said I don't think this scheme will succeed but you can see why they would want it to.

That wouldn't displace enough poor people.

Of course once you actually build your products there your IP will also "disappear".

So if it's so obvious why hasn't any other company shown off its prototypes, like Apple has going back all the way to a 2002 iPad prototype ? If it's so obvious why nearly all of the tech world scoff at both the iPhone (eg. “The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks." - Bloomberg) and the iPad ("little more than a giant iPhone." - Wired, and "In the end, I think that the iPad will eventually be regarded [as] product that Jobs should have left on the drawing boards." - TechRepublic.) when they were first released ? In the case of the iPhone much of the ridicule was even specifically aimed at the touchscreen interface, the very thing which you now claim was obvious : "it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine" - Steve Ballmer. Hindsight is always 20/20.

They were already losing money, the Fire is (was?) a loss leader for Amazon. Hard to drop the price if you're already selling at a loss.

Classic case of blaming the user. On any other modern OS the user doesn't need to take this kind of nonsense under consideration.
BTW when I do use *BSD or Linux desktops I'm more of an XFCE man.

In OSX the details that need to be hidden are hidden because most people buy computers to get something done not to fiddle with the innards. That control you talk of is mostly illusionary. It's like muscle car owners: sure they may have "complete control" over their car's engine, being able to tweak every little thing but it comes at the expense of usability and practicality. In the end it's masturbatory, it serves no other purpose than its own sake.