Chinese smartphone sales have dropped dramatically this year. Mostly as smartphones have reached a point where upgrading cost vs return is no longer worth it for many. I really wanted Googles modular phone to be a successful but it died very quickly even before release otherwise that would have been a great way to upgrade parts without disposing old phones and creating waste.
If you think that's a shame, do check out Fairphone [0]. It's not completely modular, but it's trivial to replace the battery, screen and camera's without tools. See also their spare parts shop [1], all of which you can replace by yourself.
Coincidentally they just made some announcements on that [0].
> Right now, we’re hard at work to get Android 7.1 “Nougat” into the hands of existing and new Fairphone 2 users this summer.
Unfortunately:
> Now, you may be wondering, “why not Android 8, ‘Oreo’?”. Android 8 and 9 are entirely new levels of complexity from Android 7, far more different than 7 was to 6. Therefore, attempting the upgrade to 7 was the best option.
Ah no google is not into selling phones as much as getting people to use its services. I don't think they bought it for nefarious reasons but simply ended it as they were unlikely to get traction for it. All the phone manufacturers and telco would have have opposed it anyway as it would have destroyed trillion dollars of their market cap.
