Good questions, but in terms of supply chain, this
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Every electronics/tech company goes through iterations of hardware that vary as time goes on. This is mainly due to the guts of the hardware changing. You'll see this with everything from Dell computers to Nintendo handhelds, from iPhones to anything Android to plain old corded phones.
It is likely the phone guts had different plastic shells on them and went to various vendors.
When he talks about new phones, he's jumping into a product development cycle that is likely based annually or bi-annually. That means, in order for the phones to be worth something to consumers, they have to come to market in a timely fashion.
With that in mind, the blog post reads quite a bit better, imho.