Made in the USA….or not

With all the talk of tariffs and Canadians boycotting American goods, it got me thinking about how US-centric our technological lives are. I wondered, for those not resident in America, if it would be possible to live a tech life without help from across the pond and what other options for software and hardware were available? First, before anyone gets hot under the collar, this is purely an educational look out across the market to see what else is out there: I’m not suggesting or recommending anything anti-USA here. Chill, folks. Second, I’ll be taking companies at face value and not digging into their ownership or where they manufacture. Third and finally, this is not an exhaustive list of alternatives – I’ve simply picked up a few examples here and there to show possibilities. Let’s take a look and see what’s out there.

Smartphones and Tablets
As mobile devices dominate our days, let’s check out smartphones and tablets first. Obviously if you are part of the Apple flock, you are plain out of luck as there’s no alternative. Apple make the hardware and write the operating system. It’s as American as mom’s apple pie (sorry).
On the handsets themselves there’s some good choices. The big name is obviously Samsung which is South Korean, then there’s Sony’s Xperia handsets from Japan, and HTC is in Taiwan plus plenty of Chinese firms like Hong Kong-based Lenovo and Shenzhen’s OnePlus. If you’re looking for something European, check out Nokia HMD and Nothing. There’s a handy reference here if you want to see what’s available by country.
When it comes to Android, Google is the developer of the OS and there’s no getting away from that even taking AOSP into consideration. There are a few other OSes out there on smartphones such as Huawei’s Android fork HarmonyOS and variants of Linux though I’d leave that to the specialists.

Search
Search is another big part of everyone’s day and if you want to move away from Google or Bing, there are some options. Ecosia is a German search engine that supports the planting of trees as a reason to switch over. If concerns about privacy are more your issue, there’s French engine Qwant and, well, Swiss outfit Swisscows. I tried Qwant and wasn’t too impressed with it as it seemed to prioritise older news over newer events until you reduced the time window. YMMV. All of the above search in English.

PCs and Laptops
As with mobile devices, unless you are in the Apple camp, there are plenty of manufacturers outside of the USA to choose from. Both Acer and Asus are Taiwanese firms and from Japan there’s Sony and Fujitsu. Most countries seem to have specialist PC assemblers like FiercePC in UK who tend to cater to the gamers rather than office buyers. Support a local supplier if you can.
When it comes to the desktop OS, there’s limited choice as Microsoft Windows is dominant. However, there are Linux variants such as SUSE which is headquartered in Luxembourg. If you are feeling brave (or mad), there’s Huawei’s HarmonyOS for PCs or the FreeBSD-based Kylin from China. I’ll pass, thanks.

Office Apps
If you are looking to move away from Microsoft Office, the closest is perhaps LibreOffice. Open source, it’s a successor to StarOffice and OpenOffice, and is based out of Germany. It will read most Microsoft standards like doc and xls in addition to the ODF formats. LibreOffice is limited when it comes to mobile apps, though Collabora in England offer compatible mobile apps. WPS Office is another popular choice by Chinese company Kingsoft. They’ve been around for ages…

Email
There are hundreds of email providers out there if you don’t want to use Gmail, Yahoo! or Outlook.com. I’m sure you can find one that’s local to you. Personally, I use Proton in Switzerland as it offers quite a nice little secure package of email, VPN, storage and password management. It’s a paid-for service but you don’t have to worry anyone snooping around in your business or adverts popping up in your email.

Social Media & Messaging
When it comes to social networks, companies from USA and China occupy the top 5, but there are some popular options from other countries. Mastodon was created by a German developer, Eugen Rochko, and the company is still based in Berlin.  Telegram is currently based in Dubai but has historical links with Russia that it has actively tried to shake off. Yubo is a French social media app with over 85 million users. Moj hails from India and is a bit of a TikTok clone but allegedly has around 120 million active users.
Obviously the problem with social media and messaging is you need to bring your friends with you.

Music Streaming
The biggest name in music streaming is Spotify and it’s from Stockholm, Sweden. There are other streaming services from local broadcasters, such as the free BBC Sounds, which offers radio and podcasts. Look for similar services in your area.

Video Streaming
All of the big names in video streaming – Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV+ – are US based and it’ll need sacrifice to give them up as there’s no easy direct replacement. There are plenty of specialist video streamers out there, from those that focus on production from a particular country, e.g. BritBox, or those that go for a specific genre, such as Sony’s anime powerhouse Crunchyroll. Of course, most terrestrial broadcasters offer catch-up services so you could save some money by only using their services. As examples, the UK has BBC’s iPlayer, in Ireland there’s RTÉ Player and in France, France Télévisions.

Conclusion
If there’s one takeaway from this review, it’s that you often don’t need to stay with the default and you can be more assertive in your choice of technology. Want  more privacy? Pick Proton. Worried about WhatsApp? Try Telegram. Don’t like Twitter’s toxicity? Move to Mastodon. Just because it came “out of the box”, doesn’t mean that you have to stick with it, and while free-of-charge can be tempting, it might not be the best option, though terrestrial broadcasters can offer great value in their catch-up services.

Be brave and try something new.