Ask Paul: June 29 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here's another round of Q & A to start off the summer.
Is there room for a third?
KingNerdTheThird asks:
In my opinion, not enough is made of how there are effectively two phone makers who control industry trends. Do you see it as problematic that there is not more competition in the phone space?
I don't, for two reasons.

Apple and Samsung seem to keep each other in check, with each trying to leapfrog the other with each new generation of devices. And, perhaps more important, we have such great choice now in phones. And with the market maturing, those great choices extend to much less expensive devices as well. This actually makes the phone market "better," I think, at least for consumers.

But it's hard not to think about Stephen Elop's open question about whether the market could support three ecosystems, with Nokia at the time adopting Windows Phone. History has shown that it cannot, and the smartphone market has followed down the same two major players path that the PC market did, with one dominant product and one secondary product. (The processor market was similar as well, at least until mobile disrupted things.)

This is a generalization of sorts; in the US, the iPhone is about 50 percent of the market. And worldwide, Apple still makes the most profits. Or, most of the profits, to put it more succinctly.

Ecosystems are not the same as phone makers, I know. But this profit thing factors into the overall health question you're asking. And it seems today that the companies that are doing best are the very biggest and, conversely, the very smallest. And I think that's because the low or non-existent profit margins in the Android space hurts those companies (LG, HTC, Motorola, etc.) that stuck in the middle the most.

Anyway ... The fear with consolidating markets is that consumer choice will suffer. That hasn't happened in the smartphone market. At least not yet.
ThinkPad X1 Tablet review?
simont asks:
Any chance you can get a Lenovo X1 Tablet 3rd Gen to review?
Yes, I could do that. The thing is, I'm backlogged on Lenovo hardware reviews right now, and when I look at what's available, a Windows tablet doesn't seem all that necessary, broadly speaking. So far, I've declined to review that.

That said, I'm open to suggestions. If there is enough call for this, I would consider reviewing it.
Is Microsoft squeezing out third-party developers?
Darekmeridian asks:
Sort of asked you about this on Twitter. It seems like over the last few years Windows features have grown so much that it has to be taking a toll on 3rd party software developers. For example personally I have dropped things like Dropbox & BackBlaze, Eset Antivirus & Malware Bytes, Ashampoo Snap, Nero Burning ROM, Process Lasso, Adobe Acrobat, Daemon Tools, TeraCopy, Display Fusion, these are just a few I remember off-hand that have become outdated or replaced by built in OS features. So do you think Microsoft is putting the squee...