Verizon Rejected iPhone Deal

SnowDog74 writes "According to an article in USA Today, Verizon Wireless rejected an Apple deal over the iPhone. The article says that Verizon wasn't happy with the strict terms Apple demanded — a Verizon Wireless VP is quoted saying that Apple wanted a cut of monthly revenues and control of the customer relationship. What's perhaps equally interesting, however, is the implication from sources that say Cingular's exclusive 5-year deal with Apple applies within the United States only. If this is true, it undermines some of the criticism Apple has been receiving for their business strategy surrounding the iPhone, given the size of the cell-phone market outside the US."

Comments

iGot

[Anonymous Coward]

iGot First Post

Thanks,
Cingular

interesting? no.

[grub]

What's perhaps equally interesting, however, is the implication from sources that say Cingular's exclusive 5-year deal with Apple applies within the United States only.

duh... perhaps Cingular isn't used outside the US (or very much?) They aren't in .ca, for example.

Re:interesting? no.

[Andy_R]

Exactly. Cingular have no visible presence at all here in Britain either, nobody expected that deal to apply here either.

Re:interesting? no.

[Anonymous Coward]

And here in Slobovia, we have no Verizon either.

Re:interesting? no.

[ack154]

While that deal may not apply, it doesn't mean Apple won't try to ink some multi year deal with some other specific carriers around the rest of the world though.

Re:interesting? no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does that matter? The deal with Cingular has been reported to mean that the iPhone is exclusively available to Cingular customers. For Apple to sell the phone overseas, that exclusivity clause would have to specifically indicate the US market only or Apple could get sued by Cingular for selling the iPhone in other countries.

So it's still important to note that the deal with Cingular applies only to the US market because it opens up the possibility that the iPhone will be available to users in other countries.

Re:interesting? no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs said in the keynote that it would be available in other countries.

Re:interesting? no.

[arjun]

hasn't cingular merged with at&t ?

Re:interesting? no.

[gaspyy]

Actually, I haven't heard of them anywhere in Europe. Verizon neither.
In Europe (and I suspect Asia too) it's all about Vodafone and Orange.

Re:interesting? no.

[benna]

AT&T has owned cingular for a while, but they have recently decided to rebrand with the AT&T name.

Re:interesting? no.

[abandonment]

It's already been announced that Rogers has the exclusive here in Canada for the iPhone...the funny part is that Rogers is the only cel provider that invested into their GSM network, so they kinda won by default.

Re:interesting? no.

[Fred Ferrigno]

Actually, it's more like Cingular bought AT&T. Cingular bought AT&T Wireless in 2004, which had been spun off as a separate company from AT&T. Later in a separate move, SBC (Cingular's parent) bought AT&T, taking the name for themselves.

Re:interesting? no.

[Fred_A]

duh... perhaps Cingular isn't used outside the US (or very much?)

An exploration of the Cingular web site offers absolutely no indication of a presence outside of the US (apart from Puerto Rico if that counts). There is a section in Spanish although I suppose that's common for the domestic US market nowadays. Browsing the GSM roaming pages seems to show that they just use whatever local carriers are present.

That latter page also seems to hold a weird piece of information :

The 911 emergency number is unique to the U.S. In many European countries, the emergency number for police, fire, or ambulance is 112. Outside Europe, emergency numbers will vary by country.

I seem to remember that 112 is part of the GSM standard and therefore should connect you to the emergency services whenever you are connected to a GSM network (whether you have a service or not, i.e. you should probably even be able to access it without a SIM card).

I know 911 is the US standard, but shouldn't 112 also work on a US GSM netwok ?

Re:interesting? no.

[squiggleslash]

Cingular's owners, SBC (now called at&t after buying the AT&T long distance company) and BellSouth have merged after SBC bought BellSouth.

SBC wants to rebrand everything as at&t, so will is in the process of a slow rebranding of Cingular.

In an entirely unrelated fact which tends to confuse everyone, there used to be a company called McCaw Wireless, which was bought by AT&T (the long distance company, then also expanding into other areas), rebranded to AT&T Wireless Services, and then sold off (at the same time as a bunch of other operations) under that name. Shortly afterwards, Cingular bought McCaw, and integrated the two networks.

(Technically I'm using the wrong terminology and should be refering to AT&T instead of McCaw and at&t instead of SBC, but the point is I'm trying to undo some of the confusion, and it becomes infinitely easier to see what's happening if I use their "original" names.)

So: In 1984, Bell System is split out into AT&T, BellSouth, the companies that became SBC, and a bunch of other operations. SBC and BellSouth have their own cellular networks.

In the mid nineties, AT&T buys a cellular operator called McCaw.

In the late nineties, SBC and BellSouth merge their cellular operations into a single company called Cingular Wireless.

In the early 2000s, AT&T breaks itself up again. McCaw (as AT&T Wireless) becomes a seperate company again. AT&T Long Distance is what's left of the original AT&T company.

In the mid 2000s, Cingular buys McCaw

A year ago, SBC buys AT&T Long Distance, and renames itself to at&t. Rumour has it that edward e. whitacre Jr is a k.d.lang fan.

A month ago, SBC buys BellSouth. Cingular is now controlled completely by SBC. SBC starts the process of rebranding it too.

Re:interesting? no.

[slumberer]

So it's still important to note that the deal with Cingular applies only to the US market because it opens up the possibility that the iPhone will be available to users in other countries. Given that Apple on day one that they were going to release to Europe at the end of the year and Asia next year this was already obvious.

Re:interesting? no.

[tenton]

Actually, it's more like Cingular bought AT&T. Cingular bought AT&T Wireless in 2004, which had been spun off as a separate company from AT&T. Later in a separate move, SBC (Cingular's parent) bought AT&T, taking the name for themselves.

Well, mostly. There's more incest to the story. SBC wasn't Cingular's only parent. It was a joint venture between SBC and BellSouth. Bellsouth, which is now part of SBC (using the AT&T name). Thus making Cingular wholly owned by SBC now (using the AT&T name).

Service & retailers: the other side of the coi

[sporkme]

Granted, the revenue stream from added features seems to be the principal deal-breaker, but TFA also highlights that Verizon would be cut out of certain customer service decisions. However you feel about the company, they do pride themselves on their customer satisfaction numbers. As a retailer, I found their policies to err on the side of customer benefit.

Apple's terms would have cut out major retailers when it comes to the handset, making it more difficult to retain those retail partners. It also would have taken warranty policy from the carrier to the manufacturer - and the iPhone would be the only handset with this arrangement. I think customers would have hated it, but maybe Apple planned to be more fair. How are they on iPod warranty?

Verizon has been treading lightly with retailers since their split with Radio Shack (over R$ revenue). The separation hurt both companies right off the bat, and the implications of the separation are still developing. If Wal-Mart and Best Buy were cut out of the iPhone deal, they might have such a sour taste that they skip off to Cingular instead.

If Cingular's terms do not exclude third-party retailers, Verizon will suffer anyway.

Let's see how Verizon feels at the end of the year

[TheSlashaway]

Let's see how Verizon feels at the end of the year when a googazilion iPhones are sold.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thought it DID apply outside the states must be a complete idiot, seeing how Singular and Verizon aren't even on some of those markets at all. I suppose Apple could just give those markets up. <snicker>

Re:Let's see how Verizon feels at the end of the y

[greenhaven]

Looks like they won't be getting a home run tonight.

Five years?

[Rodness]

That's one hell of an exclusive deal. As much as I hate Cingular and their pricing plans, I'm not sure I can wait five years for other networks to have that phone... especially if they put out a nano-sized version.

Sigh... why oh why can't I have my apple and eat it too?

Re:Five years?

[Dr. Spork]

I'm confused about what the contract says. Will the phones be locked by contract to work only on Cingular, or is the deal that Cingular will be the only carrier to offer them to their customers?

In other words, will there be an unlocked iPhone available into which I can install my T-Mobile sim card? It's not clear to me that the five-year deal precludes that. Besides, even if it does, I'm sure unlocked iPhones will be available on the internet, since they will be demanded in other countries. Is there anything standing in the way of them just working with a T-Mobile sim card, like any other unlocked phone?

Re:Five years?

[Frogbert]

Americans need to get with the program. I don't know how your phone systems work there, but in the rest of the world all you need to do to change phones is to buy the phone and put your sim card in it. What is going on over there?

Re:Five years?

[Reaperducer]

Is there anything standing in the way of them just working with a T-Mobile sim card, like any other unlocked phone?

Possibly. It's been fairly well documented that Apple's deal with Cingular involved them modifying the Cingular system in order to support the Visual Voice Mail feature.

Whether this will happen with other carriers around the world remains to be seen. I suspect what will happen is that when you roam on another carrier (say T-Mobile or something outside the country) your phone will work OK, but that particular feature won't work unless you're roaming on a carrier that has similarly modified its network to support the Apple feature.

Re:Five years?

[jZnat]

Competing standards on how to transmit and receive on the phone (GSM isn't the only one here), and mobile phone company subsidising of cell phone prices with contracts (otherwise the phones are a lot more expensive, and I don't even know where you can buy the normal, unlocked phones without a contract).

Re:Five years?

[doktor-hladnjak]

A mixture of CDMA and GSM as opposed to pure GSM plus a cell phone market where all companies lock the phones you buy to only work with that carrier. Fortunately, the laws just changed (I believe by a court ruling) such that having a third part unlock your phone for you is now completely legal.

Re:Five years?

[Buran]

"I don't even know where you can buy the normal, unlocked phones without a contract)."

Like a zillion other things ... on the website of the company that manufactures them.

Who would have ever imagined that?

Re:Five years?

[babbling]

What's so special about the phone? It can't run 3rd party applications, so the only interesting things it can do are:
- Play music crippled by DRM
- Surf the net
- A few features that all PDAs have, such as calendar and notes

The interface is nice because it's a big touch screen, but if my experience with Apple hardware is anything to go by, it won't be very durable.

The only thing the iPhone has over other PDA phones is Steve Jobs and Apple marketing it. By the time it comes out there will probably already be a different PDA phone with similar capabilities that can run 3rd party applications. That will lead to interesting possibilities while the completely proprietary Apple fanatics lock themselves into DRM hell.

Re:Five years?

[Rodness]

Actually, I want it because the interface for phone calls and text messages blows everything else away.

I don't care so much about the ipod functionality (I already have one that I only use at the gym) or the web browser. I want it because I can't manage a conference call or even call waiting on my phone without dropping someone 70% of the time.

3rd party apps? Who the hell cares. It's a phone. It makes phone calls. That's what I want it for. There are no good third party apps anyway.

DRM? Fairplay vs PlaysForSure.. I'll take Fairplay. You can always cut a cd and rerip if it bothers you so much.

Re:Five years?

[aesiamun]

Yeah because it can't play mp3 files or unecumbered aac files...

jackass

Re:Five years?

[jonwil]

Here in Australia with Telstra, you can buy phones on contract from Telstra and said phones are NOT locked to the Telstra network. Of course if you want to drop out of the contract before its up, there are early termination fees that you have to pay. You can also walk into the store and buy any phone they sell outright with no contract, no subsidy and no network lock and then use it with any carrier that is compatible (in australia or otherwise)

The only phones Telstra lock to their network are prepaid phones and I think they may even unlock those if you have spent enough money with them.

If Cingular did the same thing with the iPhone and sold it completely unlocked at whatever cost they had to sell it at to make a profit from the iPhone sale, all this would be a moot point.

Re:Five years?

[rolfwind]

1. There are benefits only to Apple - Multitouch as it is implemented in the iPhone is propietary, owned by Apple (bought up by, actually, look up Fingerworks in google) and is not available elsewhere in its current implementation. I have a Fingerworks Keyboard, it works very well and there has not been a replacement - look up on ebay - people buy the keyboards used for $600-900, they were $299 retail before the company shut down when they sold.

2. I find it hilarious that people think that something "as good" will come out in the time Apple has this phone to market. I've been waiting since '97 that does those feature Apple has and does them well. Granted, I'm not sure if Apple is that great, but the demonstration by Jobs blew away my own experience with mobile phones, smart phones, etcetera. The other phones suck. They've made it worse, not better, in the last ten years when talking about actually using the features packaged. To think that the companies can rush out a job as good in six short months is ridiculous. The ball is in Apple's court to get it wrong.

3. If this phone sucked so much, why do people go on and on about it? Why isn't it like Apple's Cube, which Jobs demoed and just sank?

I'll acknowledge several things: This phone isn't a guaranteed hit, it has to deliver when it comes out. 4/8GB is too small if it wants to do video too (and well, should have been 16/32). I hate that it is tied to one provider.

Re:Five years?

[Paulrothrock]

First off, the iPhone can play plain old MP3s. If you wanna rip your music to them, go right ahead. They do still sell CDs, don't they?

Second, the term "crippled" is an exaggeration, especially when compared to other DRM schemes. Yes, you can play music "crippled" by DRM so that you can only play it on five different computers. Or you can play music "crippled" by DRM on an unlimited number of iPhones or iPods. Or you can burn it to an unlimited number of CDs, so long as you only want five copies of the same CD. Which you can then re-rip and make copies of.

To say Apple's DRM is crippling is simply Linux fanboy speak for "I don't want to pay for music."

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can have your apple and eat shit, too

Re:Five years?

[G-funk]

Why are contract phones locked? They're not here (in .au). Who gives a shit if you're also paying verizon for your actual service, if you've signed a contract to pay cingular every month for a year?

Re:Five years?

[400049]

Here in India (which by the way is fastest growing cellphone market in the world with more than 150 million phones) there is no lock-in in GSM segment. CDMA operators do lock-in in the sense that there are only two operators present in this segment and sim cards are not interchangeable, last time I checked. But the greater part of the market i.e. GSM has no lock-in. Buy a sim and use it any phone whihc is based on GSM technology.

Re:Five years?

[AaronLawrence]

The question wasn't "why do the carriers do it" but "why do americans put up with it?"

Land of the Free to be shafted and used by the corporations?

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a phone. It makes phone calls. That's what I want it for. "

If that's really all you want a $25 phone should be all you need.

Re:Five years?

[digitalchinky]

If I had mod points, I would have marked you as 'troll' So you can put two fingers on the screen at the same time - this is definitely not a new concept. Some of the touch screen kit I used in the military (electronic warfare) was doing this more than 10 years ago.

I had a logitech keyboard with built in touch pad that could handle two and three finger presses just fine (interpreted as middle or right mouse click) 8 years ago.

The phone pretty much does suck for very valid reasons. I have a nokia N80 (no touch screen) that is quite a bit more functional. What can't be done in the default software layout is available for download from third parties. I also have a P900 and P990 from sony ericsson which do everything the iPhone does, and more. The only thing they are not able to do is the multiple touch thing. Big deal.

What is really unfortunate is that the US audience lags a year or two behind the rest of the world. Your phones are crippled by service providers, and most people are not even aware that they could buy a cell phone outright without a contract.

No hilarity here at all, there are better phones already. Not sure about in the US, but the rest of the world are finding it strange that people like you think it's some kind of innovative new technology. This appears to be why people are 'going on and on about it' from where I set here in Asia.

Your point about the memory is odd as well. I have a 4 gig memory card in my N80, though 8 gig sticks will hit the shelves before the iPhone is released. You certainly could have your 16/32 gig memory card, but by todays standards it'd be more like a memory slab.

Don't know what you are using to convert video, though I can fit between 4 and 8 movies on a 4 gig card without trouble. A whole season of stargate atlantis fits nicely.

Re:Five years?

[dcam]

The biggest WTF in the US mobile phone system is you pay to recieve calls.

Re:Five years?

[anothy]

you've missed the point. it's overwhelmingly likely that you'll be able to do exactly that with the iPhone, just like you can with the vast majority of other GSM phones in the states (getting phones unlocked is not tremendously difficult, and when it costs you anything, i've never seen it break about $20). but with a two year contract, i'm tied to paying that operator, like it or not. let's say my bill's $40/month; that's $960. certainly more money than most people are wiling to just eat. the early termination charges on such things are generally ~$300 or more, too.
the GSM vs. CDMA thing is certainly a complicating factor, as well; no SIM cards in CDMA phones (generally; some have RUID (right?) cards, but i've never seen one in the US). it's also not just "Americans", of course, but Canadians, Koreans, Indians, and a bunch of other places - even parts of Europe! GSM's certainly the dominant force internationally, but it's incorrect to portray it as the only game around outside the US.

Re:Five years?

[Simon Garlick]

I want it because the interface for phone calls and text messages blows everything else away

You think a TOUCHSCREEN is going to be good for composing text messages??

Re:Five years?

[MattHaffner]

Americans need to get with the program.

What? We are the program. We made it, we run it, we sell it. Free market, baaay-beee! Get with the program!

I mean look at our cable, land-line, and internet markets. It's all about competition and survival-of-the-fittest over here. The consumer rules! We have the best services for the best prices anywhere in the world. By definition. Anything, anywhere else is just some mock-up of the free market we have in place here in the U-S-of-A, likely held together with some pseudo-socialist glue. Our companies live and die in the market trenches without any pansy help from the government. Sheee-ooot.

Cheney/Lay 2008!

Re:Five years?

[Alex]

Americans need to get with the program.

What? We are the program. We made it, we run it, we sell it. Free market, baaay-beee! Get with the program!

I mean look at our cable, land-line, and internet markets. It's all about competition and survival-of-the-fittest over here. The consumer rules! We have the best services for the best prices anywhere in the world. By definition. Anything, anywhere else is just some mock-up of the free market we have in place here in the U-S-of-A, likely held together with some pseudo-socialist glue. Our companies live and die in the market trenches without any pansy help from the government. Sheee-ooot.

Cheney/Lay 2008!

Mod this man up, funniest post on slashdot this year!

Alex

Re:Five years?

[DarthMAD]

We do have SIM cards in our phones here in America, but providers can choose to lock their phones so that they won't work with a SIM card from another provider. It's not a technological issue, it's a business decision. And last time I checked, cell service carriers are enormously profitable.

Re:Five years?

[lordofthechia]

Before you go out of the way to buy a new phone at regular retail, check to see if the company you're gonna activate your new phone with won't require a contract *anyway*. I know, seems asinine that a co would require a contract for just activating a new line without giving you a phone, but I know at least 1 that does.

Now, using that phone you bought to replace your existing phone on an old line I can't say I know any co that'll extend your contract for that. Now changing service plans on the other hand...

Re:Five years?

[MichaelSmith]

The biggest WTF in the US mobile phone system is you pay to recieve calls.

I am not a USAian but I assume that mobile phones in the USA have a real geographic area code, so the caller doesn't always know they are calling a mobile.

Re:Five years?

[Fred Ferrigno]

Cheney/Lay 2008! Ah, the zombie ticket.

Re:Five years?

[MojoStan]

you've missed the point. it's overwhelmingly likely that you'll be able to do exactly that with the iPhone, just like you can with the vast majority of other GSM phones in the states (getting phones unlocked is not tremendously difficult, and when it costs you anything, i've never seen it break about $20).

Not according to Glenn Lurie, Cingular's president of national distribution. From a PC Magazine article:

While "there are bad guys out there that unlock phones," Lurie said, Apple and Cingular are taking unspecified steps to make the phone more difficult to unlock and use on other GSM carriers in the US.

So Cingular and Apple will supposedly make it difficult to unlock the iPhone. Also, you're a BAD GUY (says Cingular) if you unlock your iPhone or any other phone. Besides, the GP's point was that phones were unlocked in the rest of the world (outside the USA).

Re:Five years?

[dcam]

I don't know how the handle things in the US so I guess I am in the same boat as you.

In Australia the mobile phones use a completely different number set. All mobiles have a 04 prefix and are 10 digits long. Land line phone numbers are 8 digits with a 2 digit prefix for different states. None of the 2 digit prefixes (add a zero to the front of the linked numbers) conflict with the mobile prefix. It is always clear that you are dialing a mobile number.

It would be a pretty dumb system to have a geographical code for mobiles, something that isn't tied to a physical location.

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Geographical" codes mean something only if you want to dwell on it, as it makes no real difference.

Regardless, paying for incoming calls actually does make sense, since the whole point of owning a cell phone is to make yourself available to others while you're out & about. If callers would have to pay extra for reaching you on a wireless network, well, they might think twice before making the call -- I know I will.

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a pretty dumb system to have a geographical code for mobiles, something that isn't tied to a physical location.

Well, welcome to America. Every mobile I've had in the USA has had a geographical code. Usually when you buy the phone you can pick which area code you want. It's impossible to tell if you are calling a mobile phone by looking at the number in USA. And yes, we get charged for incoming calls.

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The biggest WTF in the US mobile phone system is you pay to recieve calls."

(Why is that a big WTF? You can't adapt to such a simple setup as ours? Fine, we'll play your cranky attitude...)

The biggest WTF in the EU system is that they make a distiction between landline and cell calls, even to the point where you can't transfer your landline to your mobile number or vice versa. Your system is inflexible compared to ours; the only advantage (and it's a slight one given plan minutes keep going up) is that you don't pay for incoming calls (whoopee do, I don't either, I just pick a plan that covers my use).

The EU and similar systems make it a point to make separate rules how to handle mobiles versus landlines. They've reduced the privacy of the receiver too by making possible distinctions between landline and cells.

See, this is the case where you look at it from your perspective, not ours. Mobile users pay for phone use on the network, distinctly separate from receiving or making calls. I'm in the US, and have been with 2 carriers--AT&T which became Cingular, then T-Mobile. We treat voice cell minutes more like broadband access with a quota; it's based on use of the network, not *how* the network is accessed. To us, your system is truly foreign, like having to pay to read slashdot (browser sends request) but not for email (which is largely sent). That ruleset in the Internet world was largely pre-1993; that's where the EU system is stuck.

Our system does not change how costs are handled by caller or receiver; a landline calling outside the area code is usually considered long distance and is charged such. The receiver on a mobile receiving a call knows it counts against minutes. It's a simple system. All phones are equal here in the US more or less, particularly with voice calls.

I much prefer the US setup since it makes wireless and landline phones equal (again, on the voice level). There are ways to figure out if you are calling a cell, but they are not widely known and variable which mixed in with the various carriers, would require each number to be researched, and even then, with number portability, you couldn't be entirely sure. As such, I can have a number where there is little to no distinction that you are calling a landline or a mobile. Hence, I can pretend it is like a landline. With number portability, more so; if I had a landline, I can transfer that number to a mobile. It keeps companies, like credit card companies, cable tv, etc. from coming up with or enforcing policies forcing you to have a number at the residence sevice is given or items are shipped to as well.

Maybe the EU or other parts of the world did not frown upon doing business or taking calls on a mobile; early on in the US, there was that distinction, so having a non-descript landline versus wireless number helped adoption.

In Europe, you generally know you are calling a cell because of number distinction. I don't even have to bother with that at all; I *do not care* with my mobile. Most landline telephone plans, in turn, have become more cell phone like; outgoing minutes are included or long distance per minute have dropped like a rock. This forced competition. Landlines become more like cell plans; it was access to the phone system, the network, that mattered. The EU system is stuck in the days when tolls were collected at every front; the US has moved entirely away from that on the network front, and more so on the landline front for the aforementioned competition with cell plans. You could say further that the number distinction makes it easier also for established landline companies to keep their influence in the telco market, making it more like a limited government enforced monopoly/oligopoly like power.

I don't want customers, family, or friends to know that they are calling a cell. This is not their business. I don't want to get pestered what my "landline" is by some nosey folks; I have one number, that's it. If someone runs a reverse lookup, i

Re:Five years?

[yabos]

What's even worse is that if you are outside your local calling area and you recieve a call you also get screwed for roaming charges!

Re:Five years?

[luiss]

Yes, but how much does cell phone service cost outside of the US? It's not a rhetorical question, I want to know. I've hosted a number of foreign exchange sudents from latin america and europe and they always seemed amazed at how much you can talk on the phone, even though the reciever pays. Between free in-network calls, free nights and weekends and the hundreds of minutes included in the monthly charge, they all felt that you get alot more for your money in the US. It's annoying for them to call back home many times because even though long distance rates are pretty cheap now, calling a foreign cell phone can cost up to 5x as much (due to taxes and/or caller pays?). SMS on the other hand is used more often outside of the US, due to the high price here (usually 10 cents a message!) and the cheap voice calls. Of course, if you are using a "pre-paid" phone in the US, it's a different story.

Re:Five years?

[squiggleslash]

As I've said before, you pay for calls to mobiles whether it's "mobile party pays" or "calling party pays". Unless, of course, you never make calls, but that's hardly a rational moral argument in terms of who should pay. "I'm a cheap bastard, so I expect everyone else to pay for my mobile phone". Right.

Assuming you're like most people and accept roughly the same number of calls to mobiles as you make, you're no worse off with one system over the other, except in that US carriers have tried to make the tariffs more user friendly because of the perception of "being charged for making an incoming call", and typically offer a huge number of bundled minutes with each tariff, plus unmetered off-peak calls and unmetered in-network calling (ie a Cingular customer usually doesn't use up any minutes calling another Cingular customer.)

The end result actually is that the MPP regime has worked out pretty well. It's perfectly legitimate to replace your landline with a cellphone - you're not being unfair on your friends and family if you do so. The huge amount of unmetered airtime removes a great deal of the worry from using mobile phones. Operators are not gaming the market by advertising low outgoing call rates knowing full well that the prices for incoming calls are so extreme they'll make up the difference, and that the customer will ignore that aspect because, hey, that's not under their control anyway.

The disadvantage of MPP is that it raises the cost of entry. Typically most pre-paid plans require a substantial minimum of around $10 a month top-up to keep going. The exception is T-Mobile, which offers a flat 10c/minute rate and one yearly top-up as long as you've put at least $100 into the account in the account's history. But, again, that's a significant cost of entry compared to prepaid in most countries.

Re:Five years?

[danpsmith]

We do have SIM cards in our phones here in America, but providers can choose to lock their phones so that they won't work with a SIM card from another provider. It's not a technological issue, it's a business decision. And last time I checked, cell service carriers are enormously profitable.

Yep, but if you are smart you can also use the Internet to your advantage and buy your phone from Canada where the market/politicians/business/whatever prevents phone makers from doing this, and everything works just as it should once you get it past the border. An internet search on "unlocked phones" will help you never have to buy another cell phone simply because you switched providers.

Re:Five years?

[SaDan]

Eh? We have plenty of choices for phone service, including two different carrier technologies (GSM vs. CDMA).

Phones are cheap and plentiful. GSM phones with SIM cards tend to move around quite easily between different companies. CDMA phones do not have SIM cards, so they are usually locked to the CDMA carrier (but can usually be unlocked or just activated on another CDMA carrier).

I've personally only owned CDMA phones, and have never had problem buying a used phone off of eBay to use with Verizon. I've also used a couple different GSM based phones and services through work, and definitely prefer CDMA over GSM in every respect. Why people put up with GSM is beyond me.

I also don't really understand the big deal about the differences between cell phone service inside and outside the US... "world" phones are available through all major carriers if frequent traveling is an issue.

Re:Five years?

[poot_rootbeer]

The biggest WTF in the US mobile phone system is you pay to recieve calls.

Why wouldn't we? When someone places a call to me from a land line or another carrier, my carrier doesn't get money from the call's originator, yet their cellular infrastructure is used. It makes more sense for customers to be billed for what they actually use, rather than blindly mimic the old POTS billing scheme.

Of course, given the way price plans are typically structured here, we never even notice. Calls to people with the same carrier are free, and/or calls made during off-peak hours are free, and/or calls to the five numbers we call the most are free, and/or the calling plan has more minutes than we would use in a month anyway...

If there's anything messed up about North American mobile phone pricing plans, it's that many carriers are still charging 10 cents or more to send or receive a single SMS text message.

Re:Five years?

[MachineShedFred]

This is correct. US phone numbers are formatted in the following manner:

123-456-7890

Where the first three digits are your area code, the second three are the exchange number, and the last four are the line number.

Both my mobile and my land line are in the same area code, but different exchange numbers and line numbers.

Re:Five years?

[Buran]

How would they know that you're moving your SIM card to another phone? If you buy the phone elsewhere they have no way of knowing about it. That's one of the whole points of SIM cards -- that you can easily make changes like this by yourself without having to have someone else set it up for you like you do with CDMA.

Re:Five years?

[nine-times]

On the plus side, this makes it illegal for telemarketers to call you on your cell phone.

Re:Five years?

[DarthMAD]

Oh, I know about unlocked phones, but it doesn't apply here, as there will not be an unlocked iPhone available. In Canada, Rogers has an exclusive agreement with Apple to use the iPhone just like AT&T (gotta get used to calling them that again) has here.

Re:Five years?

[lordofthechia]

Read carefully:

Now, using that phone you bought to replace your existing phone on an old line I can't say I know any co that'll extend your contract for that. That would qualify as an *existing* line and usually they don't care or in the case of a GSM phone they don't have to know about it.

Re:Five years?

[dcam]

Well check out what the major carriers in Autralia charge. Optus, Telstra (shudder), Vodafone, 3. $1AU ~ 0.$7US.

We also get options like free talk time within the same carrier, free sms messages etc. Depends on your carrier and your plant and all that.

My phone is largely used for business and I get a lot more calls than I make. However I do use it quite a bit. I pay $50/mnth for a capped plan that gives me $230 of calls/sms etc. Calls are ~$.30 flagfall and ~$0.1/second. I never really hit the cap.

That aside, to my mind it doesn't matter whether the system in the US works or not. It's just plain stupid to have a system where you pay for the actions of someone else, ie someone calling you. There is no logic behind it.

Re:Five years?

[dcam]

As I've said before, you pay for calls to mobiles whether it's "mobile party pays" or "calling party pays". Unless, of course, you never make calls, but that's hardly a rational moral argument in terms of who should pay. "I'm a cheap bastard, so I expect everyone else to pay for my mobile phone". Right.

It's a perfectly rational argument. He is not the one initiating the call. If it weren't a rational argument you could expect to pay to recieve calls on land lines. This is the only example that I am aware of where you pay to recieve communication. Email would be the next closest example, however that is more paying to have access to the internet which can happen to be used to recieve email.

Your comment that the system works well doesn't mean much to me. Have you another system to compare it to? One you have actually experienced? Unmetered air time is unrelated to this issue. We get that in Autralia. Also in Australia quite a lot of people are dropping landlines in favour of mobiles.

The fact that the system works does not mean it is optimal.

Re:Five years?

[dcam]

Why wouldn't we? When someone places a call to me from a land line or another carrier, my carrier doesn't get money from the call's originator, yet their cellular infrastructure is used. It makes more sense for customers to be billed for what they actually use, rather than blindly mimic the old POTS billing scheme.

They should get money for the call from the call originator's carrier.

A user pays system means I am in control of how I get billed.

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Coward]

With Verizon you self activate via the web.

No need to contact a customer service rep.

Re:Five years?

[Gorimek]

Why wouldn't we? When someone places a call to me from a land line or another carrier, my carrier doesn't get money from the call's originator, yet their cellular infrastructure is used. It makes more sense for customers to be billed for what they actually use, rather than blindly mimic the old POTS billing scheme.

That's exactly how it works in normal countries. What is different is that it's the caller who pays the extra charge. This is made possible because cell phones have easily recognizable area codes, so as a caller you are fully aware what kind of phone you are calling.

The fact that you can just decide to cost other people money by calling them truly is one of the weirdest things about the US to many foreigners.

Re:Five years?

[jZnat]

Because we get like $200+ off the actual price of the phone when you buy it from a mobile phone company. They seem to think they'll get the money back because of the contract you'll need to have with them, but that seems to be a business model only located here in the US.

Re:Five years?

[G-funk]

Nah, the same deal applies here, but maybe our contracts are different? You sign up, get a discount on the phone, and you have to pay $X a month for (12|24|48) months. That's how they get their money, and you've signed it, so even if you then turn to another provider for service, you're still paying. So why bother locking the phone to your network?

Now pre-paid phones are locked here, because otherwise you'd be getting your phone for virtually nothing. But they'll unlock it for a fee, and free after 6 months or so.

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but how much does cell phone service cost outside of the US?

I'm in the UK, and mine is £15/month which includes around 60 free mins/day. Rates for texts and going over the free mins ain't great when compared to some other carriers, but I rarely do so. I could get better per-min rates by paying more per month, but I prefer the low monthly rate.

Included in the package is flat-rate calling to the US at ~12p/min. Again, I could reduce this by paying more per month, but I don't call the US enough to make it worthwhile.

Verizon's big mistake

[Ankou]

Ya think this is one of those times like when the guy who didn't sign the Beatles for a record deal? At anyrate, I find it funny that there are statements like free 18 months switching from Verizon to Cinguar with the iPhone. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it would be quite a slap in the face. Maby this will be a wakeup call to the cell phone companies that they are completly clueless about the market they control.

Re:Verizon's big mistake

[Veinor]

The Consumerist has reported that the free 18 months is false (original story)

Re:Verizon's big mistake

[Ankou]

Boo, oh well, one can hope anyway, thanks for the update.

Re:Verizon's big mistake

[Mr. Underbridge]

Maby this will be a wakeup call to the cell phone companies that they are completly clueless about the market they control.

Or maybe it will be a wakeup call to Apple fans to remind them that the company that made the iPod also made the flop that was the Newton. They're not infallible, and given the terms Apple was demanding, it would definitely need to be to make it worth it.

Re:Verizon's big mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

Or when the Blazers passed on Michael Jordan...

As a Verizon customer

[twbecker]

that has no intention of switching to Cingular, iPhone or no, I can believe this. Verizon gives me the best coverage and call quality (which believe it or not is what I value in a cell phone company ;), but they demand total control of their phones and what you put on them in return. Between neutered Bluetooth and very few ways to get anything onto the device short of VCAST, they make Cingular's openness seem pretty tempting. But I've heard too many complaints about Cingular's network to consider switching.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[Gerhardius]

Or any cell customer who is not a fan boy of any tech companies: coverage and quality matter. The iPhone likely won't "change the market" as some dream but it will fill a niche. The ultimate size of the niche depends on how quickly the inevitable first generation problems are sorted out, and when the phone makers produce their responses. Typically Apple has huge margins, @ 50%, so they have plenty of room to cut prices should the need arise, http://www.isuppli.com/news/default.asp?id=7308&m= 1&y=2007 has estimates.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[Ucklak]

These tripe lists are opinions. YMMV in all cases.

I've been a T-mobile customer, Verizon, Nextel, and Cingular.

Cingular is the only carrier where I reside now. T-mobile removed a tower and Verizon has an extremely weak signal.
Nextel was a company provided plan so that doesn't apply to me anymore.

I've had great service will all four of them.

My current opinion is

1)Cingular
2)T-Mobile
3)Verizon
4)Nextel

My opinion a year ago would have been
1)T-Mobile
2)Verizon
3)Nextel

and my opinion 3 years before that would be different too.

5 years ago, only VoiceStream (now T-mobile) had a family plan.

I've heard nothing but bad things about them and I've never had a complaint.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[JacksBrokenCode]

I've used Verizon & Cingular (since back when it was ATT Wireless). 3 years ago I would've agreed with you 100%, but I haven't had any trouble with Cingular's network in recent memory. You also can't use your Verizon phone overseas but I doubt that affects too many people here. The only pain-in-the-ass with Cingular was making sure that modified phone flexes were capable of switching back & forth between ATT and Cingular towers. I haven't mucked with that in a while so I'm not sure if it's still an issue.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[Buran]

"but they demand total control of their phones and what you put on them in return."

That's exactly why Verizon would never accept the iPhone. Apple wants total control over the phone and its design and how it looks. Verizon wants the same.

What do you get when two immovable objects stare across a room at each other?

The third one that realizes that denying people the ability to do what they want with what they pay for gets the big deal. Cingular doesn't cripple its phones.

Verizon getting the iPhone would have shocked me.

I'm also glad it didn't go CDMA in general -- I don't want to have to call support just to do something simple like change phones.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[RulerOf]

Between neutered Bluetooth and very few ways to get anything onto the device short of VCAST
It seems you left out that part about completely stripping the UI (that was designed by the phone manufacturer, you know, the ones with the vision of how the device should work) and replacing it with Fisher Price UI v2.0.

I've got a great idea for a cellular company, and we should make it. First, lets disable every new feature on a product that we sell, and replace it with a shittier version that will allow us to charge people money and provide it over the network. Second, lets remove any and all innovation that could ever go into a device by stripping its UI and replace that with something that might make people more inclined to purchase things over our network (you need to use Get It Now to view pictures you've taken with the built in camera). Third, lets charge an average of $20 more than every other provider, and carry fewer minutes and the same or shorter warranty.

And last, but most certainly not least, before we slowly rape the customer over a two year contract and laugh all the way to the bank, let's name ourselves Verizon Wireless, and give everyone no choice but to buy from us, because, of course, "It's the [fuckin'] network."

Re:As a Verizon customer

[duffbeer703]

I love how the Apple apologists were trying to cook up reasons why Apple picked Cingular's EDGE network over Verizon's clearly superior EVDO. And the answer is, Apple fucked up the negotiations, just like they fucked up the iPhone trademark.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[egardner4]

I've been a Verizon customer since 1994 or so. I've been tempted a number of times to abandon Verizon for a variety of reasons, many already mentioned by other posters:

1. they are often the last company to get some of the interesting phones if they get them at all
2. they cripple phone features
3. they put their own ui on the phone

However, the bottom line is that I have great service. I can't remember the last call I dropped or the last time I couldn't get service except in a remote location snowboarding. All of my friends (none of them have Verizon) complain quite a bit about their service.

Verizon is often slow to adopt new phones partially because of #2 and #3 above; Those customizations take time. But also, Verizon does a huge amount of testing to make sure that each new phone gives good service. That's why for a long time Verizon didn't carry a single phone with an internal antenna. Most of those phones just didn't provide the same level of service. I've even heard that hardware providers have modified their electronics for Verizon as a direct result of this extensive testing.

I'd like to take advantage of some of the advanced that Verizon leaves out but, and maybe I'm strange in this way, I have a cell phone in order to make and receive phone calls. Killer bluetooth support, better web access support and other nice features don't do much good when you have zero bars.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[freedom_india]

I don't agree. I bought a Verizon pre-paid phone, which didn;t even work inside my apartment in CT. My flatmate had Sprint which worked great.
Secondly, the phone was crippled with no PC integration.
Returned the phone to RadioShack, got a store credit and bought a Sprint on a 2 year contract. Heck their customer service rocks. When i moved out of US to SIngapore for 6 months, all i needed to do was to send them a mail, and they moved me to the $5 a month plan.

Sprint rocks. Verizon was and will always be a lousy company because they are Smug.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[anothy]

I'm also glad it didn't go CDMA in general -- I don't want to have to call support just to do something simple like change phones.

just as an aside: as a Verizon customer personally, and a fan of CDMA technology overall, what would've been super cool is if Apple had pushed for RUIM cards in a CDMA phone. RUIM is the CDMA equivalent of GSM's SIM cards, and while not popular (non-existent?) in the US, they've started to gain ground in places like China (perhaps because most US GSM operators lock their phones, diminishing the psychological impact of the biggest benefit of a SIM card).
anyway, yeah. VZW getting the iPhone would've shocked me, too.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[boomerny]

Here in upstate NY Verizon is king, they have the best coverage BY FAR. Every one of my friends, family, and co-workers have Verizon, and the few who have tried Cingular have regretted it and gone back to Verizon. So, while I am an Apple customer since System 7, I probably won't be getting an iPhone simply because I need it to MAKE CALLS. And as much as I dislike VZ, they do spend a lot of $$$ on infrastructure. We just got EVDO (and Mac-compatible expresscards) and FIOS (just internet and phone for now, TV will come later).

Re:As a Verizon customer

[twbecker]

I don't know what phone you're using, but my Motorola e815 has the factory UI. Also, I use the built in camera without ever touching Get it Now. It's like I said, they want control over your device, period. But when I need to make a call, the damn thing just works. With all the cameras, ringtones, mobile browsers and shit out there, people have lost track of the fact that the purpose of a phone is to make phone calls.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[Sketch]

I love how the Apple apologists were trying to cook up reasons why Apple picked Cingular's EDGE network over Verizon's clearly superior EVDO. And the answer is, Apple fucked up the negotiations, just like they fucked up the iPhone trademark. It doesn't have anything to do with negotiations. Cingular has HSPDA, which is comparable to EVDO. The iPhone just doesn't support it. Possibly due to lack of space in the iPhone, but possibly also for battery life reasons. I just got a new phone with HSPDA...data is pretty fast (and the latency is surprisingly good), but it sucks down battery like you wouldn't believe. People are already complaining about the battery life in the iPhone. If you cut that in half, it'd look a lot worse.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[squiggleslash]

It would have been cool, but you and I and the rest of the world knows full well that Verizon would only have supported Verizon R-UIM cards in an iPhone. ie you'd have been able to swap between iPhones, but beyond that...

Interestingly enough, something similar used to be true for iDEN (NEXTEL) phones (it may still be, I'm not sure.) iDEN phones used a SIM-like card (I believe current models actually use real GSM SIM cards today) which could be swapped between phones of the same model, but not of different models. I never quite understood the confusion of understanding that would result in someone thinking that was a good idea. If you're going to do that, why bother having SIMs in the first place? Geez.

I agree it would significantly make CDMA2000 suck less if the operators capitulated and let users choose their own devices and use R-UIMs. Maybe T-Mobile rolling out UMTS nationwide, and Cingular's roll-out becoming more available (now they also have AWS spectrum) will put some pressure on them. On the other hand, with UMTS over HSDPA, and with LTE around the corner (that's UMTS over IP over OFDMA/SC-FDMA, with the ability to also run over WiMAX), I'm seriously wondering if there's ever going to be a serious advantage to what amounts to being the last death cry of the AMPS system. Perhaps the UWB people can mandate R-UIM cards, and at least keep up the pressure on the UMTS people.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[XJCoupe]

You can change phones with Verizon without calling support, via their website. That has the additional advantage of not needing to contact support if you lose your phone (and SIM, in the case of GSM). I've done this a few times when I've forgotten my phone at work or a friend's house.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[stevesliva]

Here in upstate NY Verizon is king, they have the best coverage BY FAR. Every one of my friends, family, and co-workers have Verizon

Same for Vermont. Except we don't even have Cingular to try.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[Buran]

"I've done this a few times when I've forgotten my phone at work or a friend's house." ... Why not just drive back to where you left your phone and get it? That's got to be faster and cheaper.

Besides, knowing Verizon they charge you for that.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[XJCoupe]

Um, because if it's late at night, it's better to a) not bother friends by just showing up, and b) have a phone available until I get back to retrieve the one I left. Verizon doesn't charge anything for it, and it takes effect immediately. They even send you a confirmation e-mail.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[xeromist]

I have the Samsung A950. Dunno about the other guy. Just like he said, it's stripped of virtually everything useful. The ONLY reason I have it is that I seem to get good reception but I'm beginning to wonder if I can get good enough reception with a company that doesn't abuse customers so badly. Here's a short list of what they've done to the phone:

-Stripped the UI & replaced it with a gaudy proprietary one
-Disabled bluetooth OBX so you cannot transfer files or synch your phonebook
-Disabled bluetooth modem so you cannot use the phone as a modem
-Disabled mp3 playback and forced a lossy and lengthy conversion to .wma
-Uses a proprietary driver so that even if you have the USB cable you still cannot access your pictures, movies, phonebook, etc.

I've managed to re-claim a few features by using bitpim but they are limited and it has to connect in a diagnostic mode or something at a very slow speed.

For the average person they cannot get at the pictures & movies they take without using verizon's website & paying a fee. They cannot back up their phone book without paying a fee. They cannot load music onto the phone without paying extra for a cable & software CD. They cannot put mp3's on the phone without quality loss.

This is all on top of the standard US cellular carrier BS shared by more than just Verizon. They don't want you to use your own phone. They don't want you to take the phone you supposedly own to another network.

So yes, it can make phone calls. But when the rest of the world gets to make phone calls and have other useful functionality you begin to wonder why you have to settle for just making phone calls.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[RulerOf]

but my Motorola e815 has the factory UI.

Funny enough, I also have the Motorola e815. You see, I haven't always had huge disgust toward Verizon until a few months ago. When I bought my e815 I was all excited because it was a very full featured phone, could play mp3's, had a slot for a memory card, and had bluetooth (woot). I bought the data cable and took it home and immediately tried to connect it to my computer so I could cut some ringtones (which cost more than FULL SONGS) and put them on my mp3 capable phone.

6 hours later, after acquiring software I wasn't supposed to have and having risked completely hosing my phone by editing its seem file, I had done what I'd set out to do. The fact that I had to do it was ridiculous, and when I discovered that what I was trying to do was indeed possible--by shelling out a certain amount of money to Verizon to utilize services that shouldn't even require connection to their network--I was upset, to say the least, but relieved that at least there was an option if you're inclined to take the necessary steps.

My e815 is no longer one of Verizon's offerings as a phone. I was excited recently to learn that my contract would be expiring soon, and I could get a new phone. I would want one that's at least as functional as my current phone, and also one that utilizes the same version (or an improved version) of the UI that's on my e815. It's a good UI, and compared to other offerings like LG, it has a third navigation button which is sorely lacking on other phones--the menu button. But there's a problem that I discovered the last time I was at a Verizon store. The phone I want doesn't fucking exist in their lineup. That makes me sick.

Every single phone they sell is exactly the same. Sure, some have larger displays and really dysfunctional buttons (have you seen the RAZR?), but they're all just as useless as a free LG PoS.

Let me make an anaolgy for you as to why this is bad. You arrive at a Kia dealership and look at their cheapest car. Upon test driving it, you find that it has no power windows, no power locks, no A/C, no cruise control, an underpowered engine, looks like a toy, and costs $8000. You go down the street to the Cadillac dealership and find that all of their cars have the Power windows, power seats, power locks, A/C, cruise, big V8's, etc. However, you find that they repainted it to look just like the Kia, and you have to pay them a monthly premium every time you want to roll down your windows. It also costs 50 grand.

You'd tell them to go fuck themselves. Of course, both cars will still get you from A to B, just like a Verizon phone will always make the phone call. Either way, any informed person would take their business somewhere else.

Re:As a Verizon customer

[anothy]

having worked with iDEN phones a bit, my understanding with the SIM cards is that they weren't intentionally locked to phone versions, but NEXTEL kept changing the specs and the handsets simply weren't designed with support for the changes in mind. more of a failure of vision than intentional locking (certainly that's the impression the folks at NEXTEL we worked with had).

it's hardly accurate to call CDMA2000 the death cry of anything. it's still got a good load of benefits over the comparable GSM tech. i don't really have time for a point-by-point argument, but deployment cost's generally taken to be lower and speeds are generally higher. sure, LTE will likely leapfrog EVDO, but they've been in a back-and-forth for a few years now, with EVDO tending to be ahead in speed and latency; i don't really see anything indicating that's likely to change.

Surprised

[darkenbinary]

"The problem? While Apple and Verizon stores would have it, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and other Verizon distributors could have been left out." It surprises me that Apple would want to keep these two box giants from carrying the iPhone. I am sure they sell a very large amount of iPods currently.

foreign iPhone sales

[Dr Kool, PhD]

I don't think iPhone will be a hit in Europe or Asia like it might be here in America. Two thirds of Apple's revenue comes from the USA. It's clear that Europe and Asia are not as infatuated with Apple's products as America.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think iPhone will be a hit in Europe or Asia like it might be here in America."

Outside of the fanboys, it's not going to be that big a deal here in America either.

It actually has SEGWAY written all over it.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[TheSlashaway]

You are very wrong about Europe but right about Asia. Americans have no sense of what cell phones are available in Asia. They have had video, television, digital camera, etc.. on their keitai cell phones for years in Japan.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[deadlock911]

Is there a reason you put Europe (1 billion people) and Asia (4 billion people) on the same scale as the USA? (300 million)
The US market is not the largest by any means, Apple can afford to sign away a monopolizing deal to another company in the states and still maintain an open business practice elsewhere.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[IANAAC]

Is there a reason you put Europe (1 billion people) and Asia (4 billion people) on the same scale as the USA? (300 million)

Yes, there is a reason. He's talking about where Apple gets (and has always gotten) the majority of their revenue from. The US. It doesn't matter that Europe and Asia are bigger markets if they're not buying.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[maxume]

No doubt it has shifted, with the US portion being smaller, but here's one:

http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch2en/conc2 en/globalgdp.html

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[Critical_]

Surprisingly enough, I would agree with what you have to say. I've been living in the UK for the last 7 months and Apple products aren't the hip-thing here. Sony seems to be all the rage for just about everything consumer electronic-y.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[paedobear]

And this is different to Europe how? Well, the DVB-H rollout is slower than the one-seg rollout, but that's to be expected of a superior (but more expensive) technology.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[minus_273]

i think that just means europe and asia dont have enough money. being in asia right now,i can say rest assured, ipods are big here

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[StikyPad]

...not as infatuated with Apple's products as America.

Look, you euro-prude, iPods are SHINY! Apple clearly knows how to give us what we wa.. ohhhh, shiny!

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is there a reason you put Europe (1 billion people) and Asia (4 billion people) on the same scale as the USA? (300 million)

We buy more shit.

Re:foreign iPhone sales

[Anonymous Coward]

> Is there a reason you put Europe (1 billion people) and Asia (4 billion people) on the same scale as the USA? (300 million)

We buy more shit.

Whether emphasis was on more or shit is left as an exercise to the reader.

Apple iPhone

[softcoder]

Well there has already been an announcement from a Canadian cell phone company that they will also be carrying the iPhone. You will note too that Apple chose GSM, the European and worldwide standard, as opposed to CDMA, a primarily NA one, for the phone. Does that tell you anything?

Re:Apple iPhone

[icebike]

"You will note too that Apple chose GSM, the European and worldwide standard, as opposed to CDMA, a primarily NA one, for the phone. Does that tell you anything?"

Yes, it tells us that GSM penetration in the US and Canada is almost at 50% of the area covered by CDMA.

Its really pointless the keep harping on this CDMA/GSM rag. GMS is fine for itty-bitty countries where you can't get out of sight of the nearest town. It takes vastly more towers than CDMA. In Canada, and the US those towers are being built at a record pace. But the job is orders of magnitude larger than putting up 50 towers that cover entire countries as in the EU.

Re:Apple iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

[GSM] takes vastly more towers than CDMA.

It does? Why's that? Got a source? I know little about either, and I'd be interested to hear more.

Re:Apple iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to timing restrictions GSM can't go further than 35km, even if you have good signal strength. CDMA (well, IS-95) is only restricted by the signal strength.

In Australia GSM was installed in all the cities, but in rural areas a CDMA (IS-95) network was installed for the extra range. Of course, since Australia isn't in the stone ages CDMA is now being replaced with a HSDPA 3G network. America, having a universally shitty mobile phone setup will have CDMA forever.

Re:Apple iPhone

[venicebeach]

You will note too that Apple chose GSM, the European and worldwide standard, as opposed to CDMA, a primarily NA one, for the phone. Does that tell you anything?

Err... the point of this article was that they went to Verizon first. So we can't say they went GSM to get the Euro market if their first choice was CDMA. What it tells me is that they could could put either technology in the iPhone if they choose to.

Re:Apple iPhone

[sachu]

I think Apple was not particularly looking for GSM or CDMA technology as far as US is concerned. They are after the network providers with the most customer base and thus #1 Cingular and #2 Verizon.

Re:Apple iPhone

[Guy Harris]

Of course, since Australia isn't in the stone ages CDMA is now being replaced with a HSDPA 3G network. America, having a universally shitty mobile phone setup will have CDMA forever.

Presumably you meant "will have CDMA (well, IS-95) forever", for consistency's sake. HSDPA is an extension to UMTS, whose radio layer is, err, umm, a form of CDMA. (Yes, I agree, the way technical terms are misused for marketing reasons is annoying.)

So what's being replaced in Australia is IS-95, not CDMA; the replacement network uses Code Division Multiple Access, albeit with GSM-flavored higher-level protocols. And, yes, for better or worse, even as 3G networks get rolled out in the US, some will use CDMA2000 higher-level protocols, and some will use UMTS.

Re:Apple iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to timing restrictions GSM can't go further than 35km, even if you have good signal strength.

AFAIK that's not true. GSM cell towers can be configured to use dual slots (this of course halves the capacity since only one slot's worth of data is transferred in two time slots). I have gotten a link to Estonian operators' networks when situated in Helsinki, Finland (distance 80 km, give or take). Of course it's hideously inefficient, but it can be done.

Re:Apple iPhone

[WiiVault]

We don't know they talked to Verizon first. Just that they shopped around.

criticism you say?

[mcguyver]

it undermines some of the criticism Apple has been receiving for their business strategy surrounding the iPhone

Can you elaborate on this...

no way in heck a CDMA phone ever in the cards

[Anonymous Coward]

With CDMA's extreme power requirements viz-a-viz GSM, and apple's insistence on an irreplaceable lithium ion battery (for planned obsolescence, their key repurchase driver), Verizon was never a serious option.

Expensive data plan & single carrier - Nah

[$exyNerdie]

Cingular's iPhone data plan for slower speed is more than twice of what I pay ($15/mo) for unlimited data access through Sprint's vision network on my Windows Mobile Phone (which replaced Treo 600). I am happy with the service and don't want people trying to steal my "iPod phone" which is probably even easier with SIM cards to replace (not sure if iPhone has a SIM card). I am not switching. My phone works well.

Whats the big deal?

[schnoid]

People act like the iphone is THE gadget that will ruin all other service providers if they don't have it. Considering its hardly even a smartphone because you can't even add software to it, it seems to be very lacking. Its only major benefit over something like a treo is the size and style of the phone. People need to get a grip. Other cell providers will not be going out of business over this.

Re:Whats the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

No wireless. Less space than the nomad. Lame.

Re:Whats the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole idea of the iPhone is that you can access the full internet. Most applications will be run on websites instead of an installed software. If you are bemoaning the fact that the iPhone does not allow you to add software, by default, you are advocating the proprietary platform model of Microsoft and Apple.

not a match for Verizon

[r00t]

Verizon wants to disable EVERYTHING on the phone that isn't pay-per-use. If you were thinking the iPhone was restrictive, think again.

Re:not a match for Verizon

[ScottCooperDotNet]

Not sure if that's an American(R) thing or just a Verizon(TM) thing, but it disappoints me greatly that elsewhere phones are being used in innovative ways that America(R) can only dream of.

$5 for Internet on my phone per month, plus data? 10 cents a piece for a text message that is less than 250 bytes? $3 per ringtone that I can get on iTunes(TM) for a single $? Not to mention the numbers listed as having called my phone that I have never heard of? Measuring calls in minutes instead of seconds?

Re:not a match for Verizon

[rwyoder]

Verizon wants to disable EVERYTHING on the phone that isn't pay-per-use. If you were thinking the iPhone was restrictive, think again.

Exactly! When my old StarTac gave out, Verizon wanted to sell me a Razr that was so crippled, the only thing Bluetooth could do was operate a headset. So I canceled my service and went to Sprint where I got the same phone, for the same price, but *fully* functional.

Re:not a match for Verizon

[Reaperducer]

$5 for Internet on my phone per month, plus data? 10 cents a piece for a text message that is less than 250 bytes? $3 per ringtone that I can get on iTunes(TM) for a single $? Not to mention the numbers listed as having called my phone that I have never heard of? Measuring calls in minutes instead of seconds?

Doesn't sound like you need a new country, just a new phone company.

$5/month for unlimited data? Sounds like T-Mobile USA. 10 cent text messages? Sounds like T-Mobile USA and a number of others. I can use any MP3 or open AAC file I want as my ringtone for free because I wasn't stupid enough to buy some locked-in carrier-provided phone and contract. And there are companies that measure calls in seconds instead of minutes. And ones that give free incoming calls (U.S. Cellular leaps to mind).

I think you're whining about a particular bad contract you're stuck in. Not everyone makes bad decisions.

Re:not a match for Verizon

[Paulrothrock]

Outside of some large urban centers, smaller carriers are really hit-or-miss. I had T-Mobile for a long time. When I lived in Scranton, PA I had no trouble using it. Full coverage even out in the hills at school.

But when I moved to Harrisburg, I had horrible service. I couldn't even use it at my parents house within line of sight of a cell tower less then a mile away. That's when I switched to Cingular. My wife and I have been extremely pleased with the coverage and haven't had any troubles with dropped calls.

But, then again, I'm just one of those folks who uses their phone to make phone calls. Need a ringtone? Make a MIDI file and upload it with Bluetooth.

Re:not a match for Verizon

[IgnoramusMaximus]

$5 for Internet on my phone per month, plus data?

$5?! Try $50 for unlimited data here in Canada, that is what Rogers is milking me for. Otherwise its $.35 per kilobyte. North America is in stone age when it comes to communication services.

Working with Apple's like dating a supermodel

[Eternal Vigilance]

Glamorous, yeah, and it looks really impressive at PR time. But when the cameras are off and you're just hanging around the apartment trying to have a relationship, you spend a whole lotta time ducking the cellphones being thrown at your head.

IBM decided Apple wasn't worth the pain. Looks like Verizon's making that same call, too.


"Steve Jobs makes Simon Cowell look positively sycophantic."

Re:Working with Apple's like dating a supermodel

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"IBM decided Apple wasn't worth the pain."

That explains Apple rejecting IBM and going with Intel. No wait - no it doesn't - your remark doesn't make any sense at all.

Is this the latest from the Wintel trollforums? What insights they're coming up with these days. Amazing.

Re:Working with Apple's like dating a supermodel

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently IBM's collective IQ was enough to notice a teeny-tiny detail that your mental prowess missed. Namely, allocating R&D for Apple's benefit was a low return of investment. So they preferred to put it where the money flows - that is, their own Power lines. And Apple "rejected" IBM after being told "wait in line for your turn." Yeah, PR is an amazing thing.

Perhaps you think the Steve can pull rabbits out of empty hats, but in the real world there are such boring details as cost-benefit analyses to be considered. See, for instance, how Intel is ready to push Xeons to 45nm within a year, but is mum as far as 65nm Itanics are concerned. Then ask yourself why is that. Alternatively, feel free to keep up the good trolling and be ignored.

Re:Working with Apple's like dating a supermodel

[Midnight Thunder]

IBM decided Apple wasn't worth the pain. Looks like Verizon's making that same call, too.

Well, there might be some truth in that, but I think what really happened was different. Apple certainly is demanding in what they ask for, because they have customers with certain expectations to cater for. The portable and compact computer markets is where its at. For that you need low power and high performance, not something that is easy to achieve. IBM has little interest to invest in that market, but Intel does. With clients such as Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all wanting high powered chips, that don't care about energy efficiency, and with a potentially larger market between them than any PC manufacturer, you can understand IBM wanting to prioritise these guys.

Intel in many ways is probably the better match, since Intel is catering for the PC market and the type of computers that market demands. That market demands wants high performance chips that won't melt a laptop. Apple is after the PC market and therefore has the same needs. One thing that should be mentioned, is that generally Apple wants the latest chips for their computers.

Glamorous, yeah, and it looks really impressive at PR time. But when the cameras are off and you're just hanging around the apartment trying to have a relationship, you spend a whole lotta time ducking the cellphones being thrown at your head.

From my experience, I have had a better relationship with my Mac than any MS-Windows operating system. I spend my time trying to have a relationship with my MS-Windows based PC at work, but I am never good enough, my way is always wrong, but I do manage to get my work done. With my Mac it doesn't give me any false pretences of what it will do for me, in fact I usually find I can do more with it than it initially indicates.

Re:Working with Apple's like dating a supermodel

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"See, for instance, how Intel is ready to push Xeons to 45nm within a year, but is mum as far as 65nm Itanics are concerned."

Mum. That's a funny word for a development that's been COVERED IN THE POPULAR FUCKING PRESS:

"Intel appears the farthest along in bringing a product based on the technology to market.

The Santa Clara-based company said it has created working microprocessors using the new materials that will go into mass production in the second half of 2007.

Intel also said the chips will be built using its new manufacturing process that involves shrinking parts of the chips down to 45 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, from the 65-nanometer process the company uses now."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16839253/

Seems you're an expert at ignoring blattent headlines in an effort to run FUD. Good troll trollfucker. You look like a massive moron. I say look - but it really should read "are".

Re:Working with Apple's like dating a supermodel

[Scudsucker]

IBM decided Apple wasn't worth the pain.

If keeping promises causes them pain then maybe IBM shouldn't have promised Apple that fast 970's would be coming.

Re:Working with Apple's like dating a supermodel

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, are you completely braindead? Nobody home up there? Getting "error, void detected inside the cranium" returns from the wires? See, there is so much more you can learn about abusive language as well, if only you had where to store that information.

Now, about the actual content - or lack thereof - in your post. Do you really think the only processors Intel makes are the shiny Core 2 Duos in Apple's Macs? Were you capable of any shred of critical thought, you'd have done a bit of research and noticed that while Intel has been indeed shipping 65mn x86 CPUs for a year, the first Itanium CPU on 65nm is scheduled around 2008 (google for Tukwila) and good ol' Intel has been a bit hazy on details and roadmaps about it. But that requires you having basic reading comprehension skills first, which judging by your reply is a bit much to expect. So I should hardly be surprised that my points about cost-benefit analysis are totally lost on you.

Exclusive to Rogers in Canada

[Rix]

However, I believe we have the right to demand locked phones be unlocked, so I'm not sure how that will play out.

Re:Exclusive to Rogers in Canada

[Shadyman]

Rogers unlocks phones, I believe the rate is ~$250/phone.

Re:Exclusive to Rogers in Canada

[Tsian]

But, even if you unlock it, what will you do with it in Canada? Take it to Fido, which is also owned by Rogers?

Re:Exclusive to Rogers in Canada

[jonwil]

Sell it on ebay to one of those people who want an iPhone but do not live in a market or coverage area covered by a carrier who has been able to secure an iPhone deal.

Re:Exclusive to Rogers in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

If I really wanted one, then yeah. Fido's plans are much better in my opinion (for my low uses at least). But I don't care because I want an openmoko phone (a bit behind but... open).

It's all about branding

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Apple is a fashion brand, and Cingular (AT&T) probably is not. One of the biggest headaches for Apple is getting the right branding partners so that the iphone does not get associated with stodgy/boring services. Cell phone companies really hate churn. The iphone will probably have significant brand loyalty (as ipods do) and an exclusive deal will combat churn. However Cingular will have to come up with suitable ad campaigns etc to make sure that they appeal to the apple set otherwise both brands will suffer. No doubt Apple, who are very brand savvy, would have made these campaigns part of the deal.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[AoT]

Apple's terms would have cut out major retailers when it comes to the handset, making it more difficult to retain those retail partners.

I'd guess that this would be for a limited time, and for the benefit of Apple. Those big stores are notorious (ahem.. Walmart) for using their bulk buying to get better deals.

Or maybe Apple just wants all that foot traffic into their store, and they won't be able to supply Apple stores, cell stores, and big chain retailers.

Cingular needs all the help it can get...

[LOTHAR, of the Hill]

Cingular is suffering and hungry. Cingular as a name doesn't even exist anymore, but is reverting back to the ATT brand name.

Verizon sucks, but doesn't need Apple's business.

Aside from the fact the the iPhone is overrated, I think that the deal will hurt Cingular in the long run. Sharing revenues (not profits) could end being a case of "giving away the farm to sell a horse" kind of deal for Cingular.

Re:Cingular needs all the help it can get...

[maxume]

I'm pretty sure the worst phone company is the one the person you are asking last moved away from, and the best one is whatever they have, unless they think that they all suck.

Re:Cingular needs all the help it can get...

[ad0gg]

If you think verizon sucks, go try out cingular/att. Verizon has the best coverage of any carrier and better customer support than Att(good luck talking to a real person).

They are neither in .mx

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same I thougth.

Re:Let's see how Verizon feels at the end of the y

[Divebus]

Do you suppose the rejection of the iPhone deal had anything to do with the fact Verizon was planning services which compete against everything on it? Not suggesting that Verizon will dry up and blow away anytime soon, but this is the highest profile threat Verizon will face in all those areas [voice in head: but it's only Cingular].

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

However you feel about the company, they do pride themselves on their customer satisfaction numbers.

I've never been a Verizon customer... but from what I've heard, "customer satisfaction" is not their top priority.

Good

[tehaxer]

Verizon's the best carrier in the US, and they rejected a stupid phone that came with a bunch of rules that would have been bad for them and their customers. I have no doubt that apple fanpeople will eat up the phone, but I don't think the hype is enough to carry a non-fanperson all the way through buying a 500$ phone that is about the same size as the new Samsung (and probably other companies') PDA phones, yet doesn't have real pda functionality, integration with things that matter (mine is 2 years old and handles exchange, secure imap and smtp, has picsel, a great browser which samsung quietly distributes, and which apple I'm sure would devote an entire SHOW to since they have such limited resources that creating such a thing would feel like a big deal to them), a keyboard, 3g networking, 3rd party programs, sd slot? (Not sure...). It's not a good fit for a Verizon or Sprint, since they're serious carriers. Cingular is perfect for the iPhone. T-Mobile, too.

I mean, telling everyone a product you're releasing into a market that has generally been considered the highest of high tech for the last 5 years, then actually using 'High Technology' as the 4th bullet point on the front of the box and all your advertising is pretty stupid. I think the Verizon decision makers probably played out a sales scenerio in their heads between one of their reps and someone like me (I'd imagine a fairly typical Verizon customer), realized it made them look like idiots ("But but, it's HIGH techNOLOGY!!") and decided they'd let the kiddie carriers deal with the kiddie customers.

eff ell aim!

Re:Good

[Sketch]

Verizon's the best carrier in the US, and they rejected a stupid phone that came with a bunch of rules that would have been bad for them and their customers. Luckily for Verizon, locking down their phones, cripping bluetooth and selling ridiculously expensive data plans are good for their customers!

-- a former Verizon customer (loved the network, hated everything else)

Re:Good

[babyrat]

You're kidding right? Verizon has the best network in the states - I will give them that. It takes much more than that to be the best carrier. Their customer service is far less than desirable, their phones are so crippled it makes me cringe (until visiting Howard Forums and learning to de-cripple them).

As for technology? Cell Phones? In America? Compared to the phones in most of Europe and Asia, the phones here are bricks. Dumber than a bag of hammers.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon may have the best network coverage (though I know people with Verizon who have spotty coverage too), but I've heard enough horror stories about them to stay away, especially with the massively disabled phone issue.
When my T-Mobile contract expired I had the option of switching to Verizon, at a lower cost too. But I elected to stay with "kiddie" T-Mobile. Their service has worked well so far wherever I've been, and best of all, I can customize my phone however I want it. I don't have to "Get IN" with Verizon's services just to download software, ringtones, and pictures to and from my phone. And that's worth it, IMO.

They've got the business model all worked out

[User 956]

As much as I hate Cingular and their pricing plans, I'm not sure I can wait five years for other networks to have that phone..

What, you mean $31,000 a month for Cingular service isn't cheap enough for you?

Lucky us

[fermion]

While verizon might be good for some people, for those of us with good Cingular coverage, verizon just seems like an overpriced, pompous, and unresponsive company. They probably would have wanted to do stuff like cut out the address book feature and have music and video transferable only over their network.

While I understand that many people find Cingular to be joke, I am happy that cingular was flexible enough to adopt a phone that will likely force them to reevaluate their business model. They will certainly have rethink the data rates, and they are not likely to make any money off music downloads.

In a couple years, I am sure verizon, and it's customers, will be perfectly happy with the iPod knockoff Zunefone, with it's verizon only music downloads and it's DRM protected overpriced ringtones. I am sure everyone will continue to say how great Verizon is, and how the Zunefone surpasses the Apple phone is copies, although even today, with existing products, neither is true.

Re:Lucky us

[tehaxer]

Rolf. We won't need it since we already have smartphones and pda phones that play wma/v, both DRMd and not DRMd, transferrable from your pc (or maybe mac, but who cares!) via an included cradle. Oh, transferrable to an sd card, of which you can carry many. And it's funny you should bring up DRM, since Apple's DRM is much nastier than MSFT's. Let's check it out!

MSFT's is open (encryption); they aren't trying to use it to corner the market on downloaded music.
MSFT's is open (playback); they aren't trying to use it to corner the market on portable music devices.
MSFT 2, Apple 0.
Oh... MSFT 3, Apple 0 because every iTunes customer I've ever met had no idea they couldn't move their music around. Way to go misleading your customers AGAIN, Apple. Remember when PPC was faster than x86? Holy cow, neither do I!!! But I'm sure Apple customers do.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Tarwn]

Customer service numbers? They might pride themselves on those numbers, but they are as full of crap as their systems. I'm sorry, any company who has a known issue of the IVR dropping options off of peoples accounts for years, that then decides to not fix the IVR system is not what I would call customer-oriented.
Or how about the fact that they care so much about their customers that they require their call reps to handle anything non-call related in their spare moments between making call quotas? You know, those little things like recalculating bills that have gone awry (see IVR) or filing the paperwork...

My wife worked for Verizon, the only thing they care less about then their customers is their computer systems - except for th mice, those have to be installed by an expert technician. Probably not the same one that installed the fully tested software update that took down your entire department yesterday, cannot be backed out of, and is costing you your paycheck (if your not answering phones, your not earning...)

Yep, customers are number one, provided you qualify that statement as "after everythig else but the computer systems..."

Haha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon sucks! Eat that fanbois!

Re:Haha!

[riceboy50]

Cingular sucks douchebag. Haha, pwnd!

CDMA phones are unfriendly to free software

[tepples]

Its really pointless the keep harping on this CDMA/GSM rag.

The problem I've seen with phones that use Qualcomm's IS-95 system (often called CDMA after its physical layer) is that phones for IS-95 often support only Qualcomm's BREW environment, which uses digital signature requirements to shut out developers of shareware, freeware, and free software from porting their software to common IS-95 phones. As I understand it, phones that support GSM are more likely to support Java ME MIDP, which generally allows anybody to compile and run a midlet.

Re:CDMA phones are unfriendly to free software

[anothy]

you've identified three separate things which are entirely unrelated, and implied a correlation.
first, choice of network technology has nothing to do with application environment. Sprint, for example, is the second largest CDMA operator in the US, and does not sell a BREW phone (to the best of my knowledge; certainly the vast majority, at least, of their phones are Java-based phones). it is true that BREW is a sure sign of a CDMA phone, but the inverse is not true. even on Verizon's network, for example, see the Palm devices as a counter-example: no BREW even available.
second, choice of application environment has nothing to do with signing requirements. several operators who have java application environments on their phones require signing or other forms of controlled distribution and application loading for apps to run; see, for example, Nextel. also, nearly every vendor that allows unsigned apps to run on their devices (which is most of them) restricts unsigned apps' access to certain features, most commonly the PIM functions and things relating directly to the phone network, like sending SMS messages. to access those features, every network i've looked at (which is all the major US ones and a small handful of european ones) require signing.

Five years? Thought it was two.

[straponego]

I could swear the clowntards at Cingular were crowing about a two year exclusive deal. Also, they mentioned that the Cingular name and logo would ALWAYS be on screen. Doesn't that mean they were effectively lying about the resolution, as some of the resolution will always be used only in a user-hostile fashion?

Ah well, the hardware looks great and it's certainly a platform which could handle almost everything you could want from the current generation. Too bad it's going to be on a crappy, slow network run by a company which is gloating about how badly it can treat its customers due to having a monopoly.

Good news: this will make Linux-based phones much better, much sooner.

Sprint Nextel

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard Sprint Nextel was approached as well for their streaming video capability. They turned Apple down for the exact same reason. Apple was too demanding.

Re:Let's see how Verizon feels at the end of the y

[TheSHAD0W]

Yeah, and Apple gets 500 googazilion dollars of revenue.

Then gets sued by Google for revenue similarity...

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[sporkme]

I don't doubt any of this. Big companies can never seem to nail the IT end of things. I never had a problem, however, calling in and getting problems solved with a Real Human Being (TM). For Sprint, Cingular and prepaid cellular accounts, getting problems fixed is typically a monumental task. I think Verizon's call center employees are more likely to be willing and able to help compared to other providers, based on my experience. We used a special number that got us straight to the retention department when caring for our clients.

I would also like to point out the strict nature of Verizon's credit score requirements, and the large deposits ($500 or more) that are required for Sprint^W less qualified applicants.

Re:iphone is a rip

[mgabrys_sf]

Wrong price trollfucker. Although the price you mentioned was what the RAZR was introduced in 2004 at without a plan.

Re:Let's see how Verizon feels at the end of the y

[maxume]

The Razr lockup didn't seem to be that big a deal.

I'm not in the market for a $500 phone, not even one that actually made me cooler(as opposed to feeling like it); I wonder how many people really are? Certainly a large number(that will grow as they cut the price), but I doubt five million people care, and they are both somewhere near 60 million subscribers, so those 5 million are important, but they aren't the world.

Yet More Examples of Steve Jobs/Apple Arrogance

[BSDetector]

Hey Slashdotters!!! How's life in the church of Jobs? Some quotes from the article...

"One of the big sticking points for Verizon was the fact that Apple wanted control of the distribution of the product."

"Specifically, Apple only wanted to sell the iPhone through Verizon stores or the Apple retail stores, locking out other Verizon distributors..."

"...the deal they (Apple) wanted would have frozen out those partners"

"Apple also supposedly wanted a percentage of the service revenue..."

"Apple wanted sole discretion ..."

"Apple CEO Steve Jobs insisted that he have hard control ..."

Re:Yet More Examples of Steve Jobs/Apple Arrogance

[rdoger6424]

Better a stevetatorship than a verizonocracy, in my opinion. If not for steve's control, verizon would attempt to lock down as many features as possible. This from a 3-year verizon customer.

Re:Yet More Examples of Steve Jobs/Apple Arrogance

[BSDetector]

So was Mussolini better than Hitler?

Re:Yet More Examples of Steve Jobs/Apple Arrogance

[Tim Browse]

At least Mussolini made the phones ring on time.

Re:iphone is a rip

[Anonymous Coward]

If by $800 you mean $500, and by 5 years you mean 2 years.

Re:iphone is a rip

[mgabrys_sf]

Yes, I did a double take on the TOP OF THE FRIGGING ARTICLE which got the years wrong. And let's get real. Verizon is the king of nickel and dime. I'm still hacking my RAZR to turn on all the crap they turned off. And these are the guys that have it all over Cingular? Puleeze.

Perhaps smug?

[JacksBrokenCode]

When the phone is released and it's overpriced for the casual market and underpowered for the business market and even if they sell a decent number of units it will be considered a flop because Jobs set the bar too high... maybe Verizon will be sitting back thinking "I'm glad we dodged that one."

Re:Perhaps smug?

[marshmallow soup]

Verizon CEO: "An iPhone! Ha! Wireless? More space than a Nomad? Lame." Since when does Taco run Verizon? *ducks*

Re:Perhaps smug?

[JacksBrokenCode]

I think I'm missing a joke here. What's the reference?

Re:Perhaps smug?

[marshmallow soup]

It was a not-so-clever reference to CmdrTaco's first story on the iPod: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/ 1816257

Re:Perhaps smug?

[brouski]

Is it just me, or is there not a way to show the year comments were posted?

Re:Perhaps smug?

[JacksBrokenCode]

My internet crapped out the other day but I meant to say thanks for the explanation. That one was from long before I was posting on /.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[um... Lucas]

As a retailer, I found their policies to err on the side of customer benefit.

Ermm... I had 4 lines on a family plan...We were all happily using our 1800 minutes or whatever, and i was paying 170 or 180 a month. One month, there was a crisis in the family, and the total of calls was quite a bit in excess of our minutes, to the point that my bill was $680... I called customer service and explained the situation, and they said they'ed forward that along with a backdated request to up my minute allotment since i never went over and always paid on time... They said that this was a situation they've had before and that was usually the way that it was remedied... a few days later, i got a call from them that said that billing had determined that it "wasn't in the customers best interest" to do so...

Now, if they had said "sorry, but there's nothing we can do about it" that'd have been one thing... But they said "there is something we do about that" and then turned around and decided NOT to... That has made me one unhappy verizon customer... Of course, I'm sticking with them because my contracts up in June, and guess what comes out then on another network?

So no... I can't see how verizon is a customer service oriented carrier... everything with them is like pulling teeth...

Re:Five years? Thought it was two.

[0100010001010011]

You have to sign a 2 year contract to get the phone from Cingular.

Cingular signed a 5 year contract with Apple.

I wonder what the 'early cancelation fee' is for that contract.

Yay

[Thirdsin]

As a Verizon Wireless customer this is something I will likely never say again to them... THANK YOU.

It's not that I do not like "options" and "trendy things"...But I am glad Verizon looked at what was put in front of them, recognized the one-sidedness (according to the article) of the deal and told Apple to piss off. I'm sure that Cingular (AT@T, w/e) was bent over the table in their deal with Apple... That said, I hope that having been reject by Verizon previously, Apple's demands that will inevitably hit the consumer in the wallet were somewhat reduced.

Re:Yay

[kchrist]

I'm also thanking Verizon for this, but only because that means I won't be giving them my money when the iPhone is available. I'm frankly not all that thrilled with Cingular either but, in my experience, dealing with Verizon is far worse (I left Verizon for T-Mobile years ago and never looked back).

Re:Yay

[WiiVault]

I think Verizon deserves to do alittle bending over. They sure expect it from their customers.

Re:Let's see how Verizon feels at the end of the y

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Apple will be able to sell that many for scrap. They'll probably bury them like Atari did with their unsold game cartridges in the 1980's.

Fuck Verizon

[Mix Master Nixon]

A loathsome company even by teleco standards, they really and truly despise their customers and Microsoft could learn a thing or two about pure rancid evil from them. I've had multiple friends and relatives tell tales of $1000 deposits to get cell phone service from them. That is so far out of proportion to reality it boggles the mind. The ONLY thing they have going for them is that they have better coverage than their competition - but it's not worth it, not even close, and the competition is rapidly catching up to them. All their phones are hobbled with their awful, locked-down software - even if it WASN'T locked down, their software is pure crap. When my contract with them is up, I run far far away, and they never get another dime of my money for anything, ever.

And I can't help but think that I'm not the only person who feels this way. Their customer-hostile antics will eventually bite them in the ass, and I am going to enjoy watching that happen as much as I'd enjoy watching Microsoft implode - maybe more.

Re:Fuck Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Your friends and relatives had to pay deposits because they have piss-poor credit. Why is that Verizon's fault?

What is it about cell phone carriers that brings out the Big Big Whining? As in: "I went over my limit to the tune of $600 and Verizon wouldn't help me out." Well, duh. They're under no obligation to do so, no matter what one rep said. This is cell phone service, not electricity or water.

Cell phone companies are not your pals. They're massive faceless corporations dedicated to making a profit. Get over it.

I use Verizon for voice and data, have for years, and have had zero problems with them. When my i700 kicked the bucket for no apparent reason after a year, they sent me a new one for free. I used their EVDO service while traveling across the entire country last year (with the exception of western Kentucky where, apparently, VzW has decided that hill folk don't need service), and no other company can provide that coverage right now.

I pay my bills on time, every time, I don't go over my minutes, and--surprise!--both parties in the contractual relationship are content.

If you aren't content, vote with your wallet.

Re:Fuck Verizon

[SnapperHead]

I was someone who had to pay $1000 deposit. My credit used to be really bad, but I have been working hard for the past few years to repair it. Verizon does have a much larger deposit requirements then other providers. With a self phone, who can blame them honestly.

I payed $600 for my Treo 700p when it came out, so the same price for an iPhone is no problem at all. (in fact, I will be buying 2 ... 1 for me and one for the girlfriend). I pay about $250 a month for my phone currently. Why ? The cost is the same on all carriers.

You say that coverage is the only thing going for Verizon ? Might not be the only thing, but guess what. That alone is quite worth its weight in gold. You get what you pay for. This is a classic example of it.

Re:Fuck Verizon

[Scudsucker]

With a self phone, who can blame them honestly.

I can. Deposit shouldn't be any more than what they'd charge you for a couple months service & the termination fee.

Re:Fuck Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Your friends and relatives had to pay deposits because they have piss-poor credit. Why is that Verizon's fault?

Because a thousand dollars for a cell phone contract is frikkin ridiculous, thats why.

If you aren't content, vote with your wallet.

That's the problem, dipshit: you can't. All the cell phone companies in the U.S. suck for service, suck for pricing, and suck in nickle and diming your customers.

Re:Fuck Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I doubt you are aware of pre-paid cell phones.

Re:Fuck Verizon

[captainClassLoader]

Well, my experiences are somewhere between yours and the people who l-u-v Verizon. For me, in a rural area, coverage is okay, but dropped calls aren't that uncommon. Of course, given that there are mysterious areas on my ranch where I can't even get FM radio, maybe it's not their fault, as the dropped calls are usually being received at home.

Where they've been really good has been in their customer service for my laptop's wireless card. One day it died during a crucial week of hacking for my client. After doing some diagnostics and confirming the card was, indeed, toast, they had a new one for me at no charge via FedEx overnight, with a total turn-around time of about 18-20 hours. And they've always been pretty helpful with other data issues as well.

In terms of bad phone service, my landline is on Sprint (err, Embarq), and their customer service varies between laughable and homicidally infuriating. At one point, while trying to pay a late bill, I found a closed loop in their voice menu system. Obviously QA really spent a lot of time on that "helpful" product.

Re:Fuck Verizon

[kchrist]

Your friends and relatives had to pay deposits because they have piss-poor credit. Why is that Verizon's fault?

It's Verizon's fault because there's no fucking reason they need a credit check in the first place. If their customers don't pay their bills, they should cut them off the same way any other utility does (and I'm sure they will). I've never had to allow a credit check for a land line, electricity, internet access, web hosting, cable TV, or any other subscription-based service, and there's no reason for a cell phone service to do one either.

smart move

[PureCreditor]

by far the world's users who are willing to pay premiums for nice phones reside outside USA. go with verizon, and u'll limit yourself to handful of CDMA countries. go with cingular, and u'll open up nearly every country in europe and asia.

people in USA are too used to these "$49 RAZR" deals that they can't possible imagine paying $499 for the iPhone. european and asian users will. now if we can get Apple to strike deals with SK Telecom or NTT DoCoMo, then u're all set.

Re:smart move

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, DoCoMo uses CDMA. Besides, I don't see the Japanese market buying into this. Too bulky and not really that innovative compared to phones currently on the market.

Re:smart move

[PureCreditor]

The old NTT DoCoMo uses a japanese home made system known as PHS/PDC. The current FOMA generation is actually WCDMA.

KDDI/au service, on the other hand, is CDMA2000 EV-DO.

Re:smart move

[Anonymous Coward]

people in USA are too used to these "$49 RAZR" deals

We're used to it here in the European Union as well. Why for the past two years or so, one of the carriers in Romania has been giving the RAZR phone away for free (with service contract). I'd say Americans are paying way too much.

Re:smart move

[Stevecrox]

While you can't get a RAZR in the UK there is the V3i (basically the same thing) Just looking around you can get it for free on a £20 a month contract ( https://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/Motorola/V3xx%20(i-mod e) )

As you can see the O2 XDA Mini S is free on a 12 month £35 a month contract thats a PDA using WM5 and a phone I love, even their brand new XDA Orbit is free on a £35 a month 12 month contract. Sadly with O2 there are big advantages to tying yourself into a 18month contract. Vodaphone and Orange offer similar deals however Oranges recent move to fixed inflexable service plans has meant that they are losing customers in spades. Of course if your a carrier promoting 3G like 3 then your price plans are insanely good I was offered 1000 minutes, 1000 texts and unlimited data for £22.5 a month and the phone for free (sadley it was a older larger and ugly PDA.

Yeah, who ever thought otherwise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs said unambiguously in the keynote that iPhone is planned to go to Europe and Asia in 2008. You pretty much have to have abandon the reality-based community to think otherwise.

Re:iphone is a rip

[Anonymous Coward]

They did sign an exclusive five year deal, so he was correct.

And my Treo works fine for Verizon, with all the features - including free ringtones, syncing, calendaring, etc. Try buying a real phone instead of blaming Verizon for everything.

You must be the biggest Apple apologist I have seen here. Everyone has their faults, try to accept that.

Unlock any phone

[theuedimaster]

On the street I've heard that you can now unlock any phone from any carrier. http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?thread id=436627 IF that's true, then the iPhone is up for grabs for any carrier. :)

Re:Unlock any phone

[NokX]

some phones, yeah... but the iphone has particular features that the carrier has to implement themselves. for example - the iphone has the ability to listen to select voicemails. that's an ability no other carrier offers that i'm aware of.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[rizzo420]

i am a verizon customer and from what i've experienced customer satisfaction is a top priority. i received a phone in a store at the online price for new customers and without the mail-in rebate because i almost walked out. i've had mistakes made in their favor turn to my favor. and i've had no problems dealing with their sales people and technicians in their stores or over the phone.

i won't even go into how few dropped calls i've had or how great their service is in traditionally low service areas. cingular's "fewest dropped calls" bit is a joke. you can't have dropped calls if you can't get a call to go through in the first place. that's how they ended up with that number.

computers

[Anonymous Coward]

"the only thing they care less about then their customers is their computer systems"

Damn if that isn't true! The local verizon outfit here was SO bad, seemed like every other time I went in there to pay on the account "the computer is down, check back later". And the employees there, I asked about their data plans. What do I need, which cable, which phones, how much a month extra, and so on..."what data plan? what do you mean?" "Ya know, get on teh intarweb,Verizon does this now, it's on all the tubes".." Blank stare. No idea.

That store is closed now, the new one is marginally better but not much. I pay by card now and just hope it never gets snafued. I actually dislike paying by card if I can pay cash in person, less chances of getting your reality compromised that way, and the old store was real handy, drove by it all the time so it was no hassle. Just..clueless, bad hardware, bad reps. The only reason I use them here is when it is working they have the best coverage.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[nuzak]

Of course money is their top priority, or they wouldn't be in business at all. Any big company will always give someone the shaft. It's just that satisfied customers don't usually post screeds to their blogs when it doesn't happen to them.

Most Canadian providers use GSM

[Rix]

AFAIK, the only one that isn't is Bell.

Re:Most Canadian providers use GSM

[Tsian]

Telus also does not use GSM AFAIK, meaning that the only GSM users are the rogers owned companies.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[sporkme]

For those who read that, the thing to do in this circumstance is to proceed like you are going to cancel your contract. Be friendly. You will likely be transferred two or more times. When you reach the person that is actually going to be canceling the account, calmly explain the circumstances leading up to that moment, and how it is more beneficial to simply pay the cancellation fees and call it a day. You will find that they are happy to capitulate. I recently managed to "con" one of my contracted services into erasing around $400 in charges. That is about 4 months worth of payments, but they essentially secured for themselves 12 additional months of payments. Just about every call center has a "retention department" who is specifically tasked to do whatever it takes to keep paying clients. The key is to be patient, friendly, and objective.

"Yeah, it's really a shame that I am going to have to cancel, because 9 million of my closest friends use Your Company. Unfortunately for us all, I just can't justify paying these charges when Company X is going to help me out." -- "Oh, wow, you have that kind of authority? Well if we could make this problem go away, I would definitely not cancel! I appreciate your help, and I am glad Your Company is willing to work with me on this."

Take specific notes including operators' ID numbers and exactly what was discussed - you will likely be referring to them later.

iPhone to NOT be sold in Cingular stores

[siberian]

Was chatting with the local Cingular store manager and he mentioned that the iPhone is only to be sold from the Apple store. The local store franchises will not be allowed to sell these units.

He was a bit peeved, he's fielding 10 calls a day on the damn thing and just feels the dollars flying down the block to the Apple Store.

In Palo Alto on University Ave.

Might be common knowledge, I was suprised.

Re:iPhone to NOT be sold in Cingular stores

[nuckin futs]

go watch the keynote on the iphone introduction. Fast forward to about an hour and 8 minutes into it.
Steve Jobs mentioned it will be available in Apple Stores AND Cingular Stores.

Re:iPhone to NOT be sold in Cingular stores

[siberian]

Yes, this is why I mention it, conflicting reports.

What may be happening is that Corp Cingular stores will get it but Franchise stores will not.

Just passing along the rumor told to me by the store manager. Talk it with a grain of salt.

Re:iPhone to NOT be sold in Cingular stores

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be. Jobs mentioned 2100 Cingular stores - how may corporate stores are there?

not sure they care

[johnpaul191]

honestly, Verizon is often kind of behind the curve on the newest and coolest phones. i always assumed they were secure with massive business plans and didn't have to deal with that.
on the other side, maybe they didn't want anything to do with it. they are notorious for ruining cool potential features to ensure a revenue stream. they try to cripple cameraphones with that terrible pixplace thing, they trash bluetooth. i would think the iPhone is not screwed down enough for them, though it's possible the negotiations ever got that far.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[calbanese]

Even if Apple does have a monopoly, which is debatable given how they obtained the market (without anticompetitve measures in the mp3 player market) and the amount of competition in it from MAJOR players (Microsoft, Creative, Sony etc.), they are probably not doing illegal tying here. In order to engage in illegal tying, you need to have a monopoly in a defined market and tie an unrelated product to the dominant product in that market. Proving that here would be extremely difficult. The iPod sans phone is still available and the phones come in 4GB and 8GB versions, hardly enough to be the equivalent of a regular ipod, zune or other ipod. Its *possible* that if the relevant market was somehw defined as Flash based mp3 players, monopoly power could be found, but its unlikely to be defined so narrowly.

There won't be that many sold...

[Nick Driver]

...because everybody and their uncle's wazoo already has a RAZR and won't be eligible to get another carrier-subsidized phone until their 2-year contract comes up for renewal.

Re:There won't be that many sold...

[Brandee07]

I thought that the iPhone isn't going to be subsidized, despite being tied up in a contract. Something about price comparisons with the forthcoming iPDA or whatnot.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[sid crimson]

Anecdotal and, of course, YMMV...

Cingular works where my Sprint phone *and* where my wife's Verizon phone works *and* where they won't work. How do I know? My coworker as well as my vacation partner (ski trip... think lake & river cell coverage) both have Cingular.

Sprint's customer service has been good to me... I call, point out the problem, at it's fixed. Hardly the case for my wife's Verizon service... which was so poor we switched her to Verizon.

Not to mention Sprint's data plan has sane pricing. $15/mo unlimited data versus everyone else that has $40+ per month for unlimited data.

-sid

SK Telecom is in South Korea which uses CDMA

[Anonymous Coward]

in fact GSM is nowhere to be found in South Korea mostly due to pressure from the US and licensing deals a long time ago with Qualcomm.

But if in fact Apple was looking to go with Verizon (which I gather uses CDMA) then apparantly it shouldn't be too hard to get the phone working over here in Seoul. South Koreans will pay for premium phones, and since carriers aren't allowed to subsidize anymore people are used to paying for the real cost of phones. If the iPhone doesn't have 3G though, forget it, as South Korea is already moving towards 4G. Which of course brings up how well the phone will work with WIBRO, since Korean mobile platforms are dominated by Windows. I sure hope it does, cause I'd like to pick one up :)

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[timeOday]

It's laughable to discuss whether Apple has a monopoly in the cellphone market. Apple hardly even has a presense in the cellphone market. All they have is one insignificant product (the Rokker (sp?)) and one product announcement. It's amazing to me how many people assume Apple will be a big success in cellphones, just because they hit the jackpot once with the iPod. Who's to say the iPhone won't be more like the Netwon?

"Working with Apple" not "working with an Apple"

[Eternal Vigilance]

The original title should be parsed "Working with Apple," not "working with an Apple." As in a working, business partnership.

I was trying to explain in everyday, personal terms what it's like to do corporate-level business with Apple. (I have.) I thought it might make it easier for people to understand why Verizon (as IBM before them) might want to pass on such a flashy, high-profile deal.

The analogy between Apple and supermodels collectively, and Steve and Naomi personally, in particular since the tantrum that lead to her conviction was throwing a cellphone at a hireling that wasn't being subservient enough after displeasing her...well, that was just too beautiful a model of the reality of it not to share. :-)

Because Apple demanded switch-level changes

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone is GSM (only?), just like yours.

The reason they needed a carrier to sign on was because they needed basic changes done to the network to support some of the features. The one I recall is non-linear voicemail playback.

I'm sure unlockers/flashers will get it working with any SIM card in a month, but total functionality won't be there.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Tim Browse]

Even if Apple does have a monopoly, which is debatable given how they obtained the market

Interesting...I wasn't aware that whether or not you are abusing a monopoly has anything at all to do with how you gained that monopoly in the first place.

Is there some kind of official body that grades monopolies - that works out who's naughty and nice?

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Apple is great with their warranty if you by AppleCare and/or you have a local Apple store. For me, the reps had replaced or offered to replace the iPod even if the likelyhood is the iPod isn't the culrpit in a problem. I had mine replaced and it really did turn out something else was wrong, much to my chagrin.

If you don't have AppleCare or aren't near an Apple store, then it's not quite as nice, but still usually pretty good.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon tops the ACSI for cellular telephone service, FWIW

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[heinousjay]

Yes, it's the Slashdot court of public opinion. There's no rhyme or reason to it, because it's fueled entirely on emotion. Luckily, it also has no real power.

Not possible

[JonasH]

In many (most? all?) European countries, phones aren't tied to a specific carrier, except if you buy it through the carrier (with a rebate), and then it's typically with a limited (6-12 month) lock-in (of either contract alone, or SIM-lock and an unbreakable contract) only (mandated by law), after which the carrier has to unlock the phone (something which can usually be done without the help of the carrier anyway (legally!)).

I need to cut down on the parentheses.

Re:Not possible

[RMH101]

in Europe, virtually all phones - whether contract or pay-as-you-go - are locked to an individual phone company vendor. sure, you can buy unlocked, unbranded handsets, but you pay full price. vendor phones are heavily subsidised.
for a comparison, have a look at prices on a typical UK phone company website: http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/show/handsets/pay_mo nthly/all/all, versus a typical UK reseller of unbranded, unlocked phones: http://www.expansys.com/t.aspx?f=22.

The only people who pay full price for unlocked phones are early adopters and geeks. Others, like me, buy the phones the early adopters are bored of via ebay, and unlock them ourselves.
I've just got myself a nice HTC Wizard for 120UKP this way, which I've unlocked and debranded, and sped up by around 40% using a "Mr Clean" ROM via http://www.xda-developers.com/.

Re:Not possible

[CaptainZapp]

in Europe, virtually all phones - whether contract or pay-as-you-go - are locked to an individual phone company vendor.

Maybe where you live. But most certainly not throughout Europe. I get yearly a new phone for a cheap price from my carrier when I extend the contract. It was never SIM locked in any way, shape or form (why would they? I anyway stick with them for another year?)

The only phones of which I know that come locked are very cheap prepayed deals. At least in Switzerland.

Re:Not possible

[SerpentMage]

Let's see, I have lived and had phones in Switzerland, Germany, France, Austria and the UK. Until I lived in Canada I never even knew that phones could be locked. I learned about it when I tried to put my German SIM into a Canadian phone (needed the analog support) and the phone said invalid SIM.

Then when I phoned my Canadian provider they said, "All phones are sim-locked."
I replied, "maybe on your planet, but not on my planet."

Note: There are cell locked phones eg the HTC you were talking about because Microsoft has its head up's its butt. And interestingly enough very very few people buy those phones.

No this cell locked thing is a North American problem.

Re:Not possible

[RMH101]

OK. Fair comments in the main: but most UK phones *are* sim-locked.
HTC locking is nothign to do with MS - it's the carriers choice. You could say MS are even making it easier to unlock given the ease with which unlocking code can be run on these devices.
Me, I'm in favour of SIM locking phones. It means they're nice and cheap, and there's always a plentiful supply on ebay of the latest and greatest which can be unlocked for 5UKP or so to run on the network of your choice...

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[arivanov]

Problem elsewhere. Give an average american cellco like verizon a phone with Bluetooth and Wifi and they will disable it so that you do not stray from the sacred customer experience path they have plotted for you. Especially Verizon. Actually not just american. O2 is a prime example with its XDA. It was initially released with full WiFi functionality and WEP was stripped out at a later date so you can use only free APs or 802.1x authenticated infrastructure of the kind used by large companies.

My guess is that this is a matter of policy. Apple is shipping a phone with a well defined and well advertised feature set. I may not like them, but they generally obide to their specs very strictly. Having features disabled by some cretin in the cellco bondage and discipline department (aka customer disservice) is the last thing they want (especially in a new product).

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[sporkme]

Good to know. I hope the iPhone is extremely successful and that it will shove other manufacturers into an innovation mode. If the service-after-the-sale element is solid, Apple can expect even more consistent growth in the cellular market and manufacturers will have to Adapt Or Die (TM). Maybe warranty services should have been handled by manufacturers instead of providers from day one.

Re:iphone is a rip

[mgabrys_sf]

What 5 year deal - USA Today's "Exclusive"? I'll wait for some confirmation from a real news source - thx.

And as far as apologist, you're speaking to the author of the long-running "apple doomsday clock" (once the NeXT tech was integrated and they stopped their tailspin, I stopped trolling for hits, and once Microsoft started crashing more than OSX, (or spambots, or viri bla bla) then I started buying Apple tech again). I'm just basking in the on-target glow of Slashdot prognostication. Lessie - iPod; there's a laugh factory. Sony - that one is always great when the consumers keep buying anything in spite of a short-lived DRM blow-up. Don't get me started on Snakes on a Plane or Serenity - those are great honkin' trendsetting examples there....

I would seriously love to put cash on the barrel and buy stocks 100% against Slashdot because I think the returns would beat most market indicators. In which case, you can see why it makes for an addictive read around here.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Fred Ferrigno]

The ROKR was a Motorola phone using their OS and an iTunes-branded MP3 player. The mobile version of iTunes was written in Java and is likely completely custom. The ROKR was discontinued and replaced with the SLVR L7, a bar phone version of the RAZR. SLVRs purchased through Cingular or Rogers Wireless in Canada still come with iTunes, although Apple officially stopped supporting it in September and new music purchases won't play back. Phones sold elsewhere come with a Motorola-branded MP3 player instead of iTunes.

Long story short, Apple has yet to sell a single cell phone. Frankly, I'm all with you on the Newton analogy. Once Apple dries up the supply of people who will buy anything with an Apple logo, I don't think the iPhone is going to sell very well at all.

Re:Five years? Thought it was two.

[MojoStan]

I could swear the clowntards at Cingular were crowing about a two year exclusive deal.

As another replier hinted, you might have misinterpreted the required two year Cingular service contract that iPhone buyers must agree to. However, I think you're correct about them being clowntards...

Also, they mentioned that the Cingular name and logo would ALWAYS be on screen. Doesn't that mean they were effectively lying about the resolution, as some of the resolution will always be used only in a user-hostile fashion?

Yup. From PC Magazine's January 10 interview with Glenn Lurie, Cingular's president of national distribution:

While the Cingular logo will not appear on the body of the iPhone, the word "Cingular" will appear on the screen at all times.

As for them being clowntards:

When asked about a give-and-take leading to the Apple-Cingular partnership, Lurie said, "I'm not sure we gave anything." Later, he commented, "I think they bent a lot." That bending included allowing the phone to be locked to Cingular, just one of several restrictions on the new iPhone. Press reports today said the phone will not accept third-party applications, though Apple may allow third parties to program mini-application "widgets.

"If you want an iPhone, you are going to get the luxury of being on the Cingular network," Lurie said.

My favorite part:

While "there are bad guys out there that unlock phones," Lurie said, Apple and Cingular are taking unspecified steps to make the phone more difficult to unlock and use on other GSM carriers in the US.

Bad guys? What a fucktard. I'm not blaming Apple, though. I wouldn't be surprised if all phone companies are nearly this bad.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[calbanese]

Actually, legal scholar, its not the Slashdot Court of Public Opinion. Its the Supreme Court and the Sherman Act.

"The offense of monopoly power under 2 of the Sherman Act has two elements: (1) the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market and (2) the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident." United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. 563, 570-71 (1966).

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

170-180 a month. US DOLLARS? WHAT? You were HAPPY with that??

I pay eq. of maybe 30 $/month and pay no per minute fee, only appr. 0.1$/call. But in Swedish kronor of course.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[RMH101]

the XDA crippling is annoying, but easily remedied. Register on http://www.xda-developers.com/ and get a later, unbranded ROM installed. It'll usually have significant improvements in all areas including radio performance.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[calbanese]

The question isn't whether Apple has a monopoly in the cellphone market. The question is whether Apple is leveraging a hypothetical monopoly in the MP3 player market in order to enter and dominate the cellphone market. Apple's cellphone marketshare is meaningless for purposes of tying.

Did Verizon also demand

[matt328]

to put those goddamn red bars, ugly-ass counterproductive menus and shit all through the phone's GUI?

(Frustrated razr v3m owner.)

YEEEEAAAARGH!

[yesthatmcgurk]

But Vista has DRM!

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when you call other cellphones, then you pay through the nose. And you're saying it's $30 + extremely high charges for calls to cellphones for one phone as opposed to the several phones on the GP's account.

What are you boasting about again?

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they want it? There's nothing revolutionary about it! And, they have products that already fit the bill: the Chocolate and the Blackberrys and LG smartphones.

Why should they sign with Apple?

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[fistfullast33l]

I guess YMMV, but I've never had a problem with Verizon and minutes. The IN network is great because my entire family has Verizon (parents, uncles/aunts, whatever) so if I call anyone it's basically included in the base $40 I pay for service. I have no idea how you got your bill up to $680, but that had to be a lot of talk time. Was this before or after IN existed? In fact, if you were paying $180 before, that means you had $500 in extra charges at $.40 a minute so you had an extra 1250 minutes or so on your bill. That's practically a second month right there.

I'm not saying it's your fault, but 3050 minutes is a huge amount of minutes. I guess they could have cut the bill in half but there's no way I'd blame it on the customer service person if they thought they could help and have their bosses in billing override them. It happens all the time. Blame billing, not the call center guy making $10 an hour.

Occam's Razor?

[poot_rootbeer]

If this is true, it undermines some of the criticism Apple has been receiving for their business strategy surrounding the iPhone, given the size of the cell-phone market outside the US."

That's one way of interpreting the news.

Another, possibly more likely, way is to take it to mean that the iPhone simply will not be available for service with ANY carrier outside the US. At least not during the initial launch window.

Premature death

[denoir]

This whole iPhone discussion is mot likely to be irrelevant as they presented it way too early. I discussed this with a friend of mine that works for Sony-Ericsson and apparently both Nokia and Ericsson are capable of crunching out a new model from design to distribution in roughly 2.5 months. I'm guessing that Motorola, Samsung and the others are no worse.

If they are inclined to do so (and given the hype around the iPhone), the established phone developers can come up with something very similar and have it out earlier and at a lower cost. Nokia's Aeon concept looks like a promising candidate to build on as does the Siemens-Benq's Black Box concept. In addition, IIRC the Aeon prototype was fuel cell powered.

At least from a European and especially Japanese perspective the iPhone is already severely outdated. No 3G, no GPS etc? It's a beautiful phone, but the eye candy can be imitated and cloned and used in a better phone. Assuming that the other phone companies are complete nitwits they can easily create a more attractive package and get it out earlier and cheaper.

Re:Premature death

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure but I think they're blowing some smoke up your tailpipe. 2.5 months is what it takes to get a new phone plan approved, let alone designed, tested, and in production. Think 6-9 months on a derivative product. I think we'll see some cheap knockoffs by the holiday season but the hardware is not the real issue.

"It's the software," as people keep telling me. I don't think anyone can rewrite their entire software base nor their applications in that time to make a difference. It'll be the same old bad software design in a new hardware package that may look similar but will be as inefficient as the current models are.

Just as with the iPod wannabee's, the knockoffs will take the quick and dirty approach to design and implementation and never come close to understanding the real issues the iPhone attempts to solve. And just as the iPod knockoffs have done, they'll fail miserably in the effort.

antiNewton

[Gary W. Longsine]

Once Apple dries up the supply of people who will buy anything with an Apple logo, I don't think the iPhone is going to sell very well at all.

People said this about the iPod, too. Something like 90 million iPod buyers don't realize you are on crack.

Re:antiNewton

[Fred Ferrigno]

It took two years and the cheaper iPod Mini before Apple sold a million iPods. In comparison, Jobs expects to sell 10 million iPhones in 2007. That's just not going to happen. Apple might yet turn it around with a cheaper second edition akin to the iPod Mini, but there is no possible way the first version is going to live up to the hype.

Re:"Working with Apple" not "working with an Apple

[Midnight Thunder]

Thanks for the clarification :)

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you faulting Verizon for charging you for service you used?

If I have a family emergency in a different state, I wouldn't expect free gas and food on the way. Why would you expect free phone service?

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm not saying it's your fault, but 3050 minutes is a huge amount of minutes."

Ummm...I use close to that every month on a single phone.

Well the truth is

[scwizard]

They all suck.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps that is the case in your region, but Verizon works in like five separate regions, each with its own policies and procedures. In VZW South, I worked with their IT group for three months, and those guys seriously know their shit. The systems management they had there was amazing, and they almost never had downtime concerns. Usually the techs kept a couple base-image prepped systems in their trucks, so that if a store POS went down, they could swap out the systems, load the location-specific stuff on-site (done via SUS and automatic scripting, IDing systems by Active Directory and MAC) and the system was basically ready to use in ten minutes. Considering that they already had multiple terminals, the stores usually had *zero* downtime unless a higher-level network issue came up. Given the number of people working in the Houston call center, I'd say they probably had comparable downtime there, which is to say near-to-zero. The image techs were generally very thorough with the testing they did on each of the new images they deployed.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Moofie]

"How are they on iPod warranty?"

In my experience, they're even good outside the warranty. I bashed my 18 month old iPod into the corner of a desk, cracking the click wheel. I took the iPod into my local Apple store (I'm lucky, there are three near me), asked if there was any way to pay for a repair.

They said they'd have a new one for me the next day. No charge.

It may be that I'm in their CRM system, and they're extra nice to me, but my experience with Apple CS has been superb.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Moofie]

"Hardly the case for my wife's Verizon service... which was so poor we switched her to Verizon."

Er, what?

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[jvkjvk]

So basically you're saying that as long as you pay the V boatloads of cash and get the super secret number to call they are willing to help solve your problems.

I'm sorry, but you aren't actually even addressing the parent's point. You may not know this, but most customers don't have that special super secret number. You just happen to have a higher tier level of service than ordinary people.

In this case your anecdotal evidence proves, at most, that a very small set of customers (those with the $$) might be getting good customer service, not that Verizon customer service is good in general. I doubt many individuals fall into this category.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap service doesn't even begin to describe it. I've been dealing with Verizon for over 20 years now and throughout that time they have been completely consistent in providing the worst service possible.

Here's the latest: I ordered a DSL connection on a dry loop from them about a year ago. They lost the order.
Tried again about three months ago. Never heard a word until last week when a DSL modem arrived in the mail. Then yesterday the bill for the line arrived. Called the ISP (not Verizon - they're just the DSL provider here) and checked - they said Verizon had told them the order was complete. I thought about it for a bit and asked, "Could they have hooked it up to the lines coming in to my house and not bothered to tell me?". The response: Sure, they do that sort of thing all the time. So I went out to the demark and jumpered over the remaining two pairs. And lo and behold the line had in fact been hooked up. I have to wonder how someone who isn't proficient with a punch tool was supposed to handle this.

The reason I'm getting the new line is because they forced my little old ISP to change the range of IP addresses they used not once but twice, the first time with 48 hours notice, the second with 4 hours notice on a Sunday night. (My new ISP is big enough that hopefully Verizon can't push them around the same way.)

Then there was the time they called us up and said "you have a ground fault on such-and-such a line, fix it or we'll disconnect you". But the line in question was a channel on a T1, making it kinda hard for it to have a ground fault. The fault was eventually located in the bit of analog between the T1 demux and the switch - yes, rather than running the T1 direct into the switch they demuxed it to analog and connected it that way.

Or how about the time they lost the paperwork on a 56K connection from West Covina to Palos Verdes. We tried for well over a year to get them to correct it. Eventually we gave up. (This one worked in our favor because we ended up getting a fairly expensive line for free for about three years. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the connection is still in place.)

I have literally dozens of additional Verizon horror stories. Believe me, if I had a choice I would never deal with these pinheads again.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[cayenne8]

" I took the iPod into my local Apple store (I'm lucky, there are three near me)..."

You are lucky. Man, I just looked, and there really aren't any Apple stores spread across the southern states. I live in the NOLA area...and closest Apple Store to me is in Houston, TX.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[arivanov]

One thing I will trust Apple to get right will be the digital signatures on the actual code and applications. In fact I can bet a big case of beer that the iPhone has PKI all over it for every single feature, piece of code and or application. So forget about any unbranded (or hacked) ROMs full stop.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Moofie]

I'm in Portland, OR. Not sure why they put in three stores, but they did.

Boy, having to go to Houston...no thanks.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Anonymous Coward]

By Verizon, I trust you also mean Bell Atlantic, Nynex, whatever? Seeing as how Verizon is far, far less than 20 years old...

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Macka]

Once Apple dries up the supply of people who will buy anything with an Apple logo, I don't think the iPhone is going to sell very well at all

Well the jury's still out on that one. But really I think it all balances on how well Apple have sized up the combined phone + iPod + internet appliance market.

They could be on to a hiding to nothing if they are relying on phone customers stumping up their cash. The iPhone is a top of the market device, so you'd expect that the top earners and by inference the top mobile phone spenders would be their target. But in reality, those people who spend the most on their mobile phones tend to have the more expensive (per month) contract plans with their providers. And people on those plans can get annual phone upgrades to the latest and greatest phones for FREE, just by signing up for another 12 month contract. Well, in the UK they do anyway. Case in point, my latest phone is an SE K800i which I got just before Christmas. It cost me nothing, and I've not paid for a new mobile for at least 4 years now. Would I pay in the future to upgrade to an iPhone just because it's a phone? Not likely, and I'm on my 3rd Apple laptop now (MBP Core Duo with 2GB RAM, etc) and 3rd (Video) iPod, so I'm definitely Apple's target market.

So would I buy it because it's an iPod? Well they might have me on that one. I've been largely disappointed with the use I've had out of my video iPod for the following reason. In addition to playing music, I wanted to use it to watch videos when I'm traveling by train, or plane, or my girlfriend is driving. There's virtually no content on iTunes in the UK, so I tried ripping DVD's to iPod's display format. But a widescreen film is unwatchable on a screen that small and is so unpleasant that I've just not bothered with it. So the iPhone's wide screen format is very appealing though I reserved judgement until I've seen one for myself.

Lastly it's Internet Appliance functionality. Well, I do actively use the browser on my K800i, especially as it works better in landscape mode than any previous phone I'd had. It's still not very good though as it switches to portrait every time I want to enter some text into a text field (like a URL or google search). So the iPhone's browser and text entry wins big brownie points for me there. I'm also waiting to see how well the iPhone's calendar integrates with iCal on the Mac. If it supports and syncs with the nested calendar groups on OSX, then for me at leas, that's a killer app. I would want it for that feature alone.

So in summary, it's not going to be the phone functionality of the iPhone that will make me put my hand in my pocket. I'm used to getting new phone hardware for free. But the other features could win me over big time. And if I don't have to buy a separate wide screen video iPod as well as update my phone, then I'm quids in. Providing (and this is a BIG one) the $ to £ translation price is not subject to the "Greedy-Corporate-UK-exchange-rate-tax" we always seems to get stung with over here. I'm sick to my back teeth of that. They only do it because historically they've got away with it. So if the UK iPhone ends up costing more than today's top end UK Video iPod then they can stick their shiny iPhone where the sun doesn't shine, and to hell with them.

iPhone goals

[Gary W. Longsine]

Apple's stated goal is 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. That's just not not going to happen.

Too bad for Apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is so short sighted for Apple to have an exclusive deal with Cingular but not to have it universal device so more people could buy it for their own plans. I was an ATT/Cingular but wanted to be on separate system from my wife's so I can some redundancy... but nowadays some the the cell towers are shared so most of it is just in theory.
Nevertheless, it was silly to be manufacture of phones and to be selling to one service provider. However, Apple is not manufacture of phones only so I assume they can absorb this.

Re:Too bad for Apple...

[Overzeetop]

Actually, they've made their phone compatible with most of the world, and only incompatible with the "stodgy old networks" of some of the legacy cell phone folks in the US. I have US Cellular and will be switching away from the locked-down pay-for-each-bit phone system as soon as my contract is up. I'm even giving up some network coverage to do it. I won't be getting an iPhone, though - having Uncle Steve dictate my phone instead of Darth Vader really isn't much better.

Actually, USCC roams on Verizon, and I've found that 2 bars means "you'll probably get cut off any moment now" around me. I'm in a relatively rural area, and got a PAYG cingular phone to check the network for a month, and the service really isn't all that much worse. A single bar on CDMA is about as useful as the NO SERVICE label on cingular - I'm not getting any real voice service with either one, and there are precious few areas where there is good signal under USCC/Verizon and no signal with cingular.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Abreu]

I work in the "retention department" (as you call it) for the service department of a medium-large touristic company.

A large part of my job lately has been to weed out the deadbeats that think that they can get away without paying (justified) late charges. This also applies for other cases, like people wanting refunds after a no-show reservation or people trying to get free upgrades via constant nitpicking complaints.

Of course, exceptions exist, and I authorize several each day, but some people think they can get away without late charges on their yearly maintenance fees when they pay late every single year.

And yes, when these deadbeats complain to the ARDA or the BBB I just show their payment histories for the last 5, 8, 12 years and we usually get a favorable ruling.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[tenton]

Hardly the case for my wife's Verizon service... which was so poor we switched her to Verizon.

Yeah, that'll teach her!

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Fred Ferrigno]

So if the UK iPhone ends up costing more than today's top end UK Video iPod then they can stick their shiny iPhone where the sun doesn't shine, and to hell with them. Well, the cheapest iPhone (4gb) is $500 US and the most expensive iPod (80gb) is $350, sooo.. that seems pretty likely. The 80gb iPod sells for £269 from Apple's store, so if you figure the same "Greedy-Corporate-UK-exchange-rate-tax", you would expect to pay around £370 for the iPhone.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[WiiVault]

Actually as an owner of a Cingular SLVR L7 I can assure you that new purchises work on the iTMS. there was a bug in itunes 7.0.0 which caused some issues but it is resolved in the newest version. There is also a new RAZR with iTunes and an upgraded phone that is being sold.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[um... Lucas]

It's a family plan; there are 4 lines attached to my account, if that helps explain the surge in minutes.

I will blame them all; if it hadn't have been presented as an option, i'd have thought nothing of it, but since they put out the override as an example only to have billing come back and say "it's not in CUSTOMER'S best interest", that's where I got peeved... Like, how could they determine what's in my best interest better than me?

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Edoko]

Isn't Verizon the company that disabled all of the bluetooth features of its phones so that in order to transfer pictures from one's phone to one's computer it was necessary to pay Verizon to use their network?

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Fred Ferrigno]

I stand corrected. I actually have a SLVR myself, I just don't have any music purchased from Apple. I've even got a iTunes gift card from an Apple recruiting event that I haven't bothered to use. To me, if a song's worth having, it's worth having as an MP3.

Re:Service & retailers: the other side of the

[Tarwn]

"Perhaps that is the case in your region"

Possible. Of course one or two of the five applications my wife used to interact with customer accounts was due to the fact that she worked nationals for a time. She worked in one of the call centers, not a store so maybe they get less attention then the sales people that work the stores. Of course, the sales people working the stores had a great deal more leniancy in their systems to roll their own account specials, so it was actually her job to review the various options that were slapped together and post it back to sales people to make it fit in an existing plan instead of making crap up.

Out of 3 or 4 major software rollouts that I heard about:
1 offered training ahead of time for the changes (a couple days before)
all caused the systems to be down for 1/2 a workday or more (after testing, nightime installation)

Architecturally speaking, slapping a front-end on 4-5 disparate systems that each have their own authentication mechanism is a nice way to simplify peoples lives, but when you forget the details it can be hell. Like, oops, they all have differant time periods for changing passwords and, since they have 5 differant authentication methods, actually block access by the user if one has had it's password changed and the others haven't.

And lets not get into the Outlook/VBA application that handles most of the inter-office stuff like the queue of orders that need to be reviewed and so on.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[xXenXx]

I think you mixed up your prices. That, or someone slipped something into my drink.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Fred Ferrigno]

The point was that the iPhone costs more than Video iPod in the US, so it's almost certain that the same will be true in the UK.

To determine the expected price of the UK iPhone, I assumed a constant GBP:USD ratio based on the price of the 80gb Video iPod in both markets. I said the iPod costs £269, but I think that was a typo. Apple's UK store lists it at £259, which includes VAT. Apple's US store sells the same 80gb iPod for $349. Jobs' keynote said the 4gb will sell for $499 with a 2-year contract.


£259/$349 = 0.74212 £/$
            0.74212 £/$ * $499 = £370.32

Of course that's only the roughest of estimates. If you use a different Apple product for a baseline, you'll get slightly different figures. The exact price will have a lot to do with what sort of arrangement Apple works out with the UK carrier.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Macka]

NB: Today's exchange rate is 1 USD = 0.512995 GBP

Thanks for your comments. What I should have said (meant to say) is that I don't expect to pay more than the price of the top Vid iPod because I expect my mobile phone provider to swallow the rest of the cost. Hopefully it will cost even less.

Here's how things stack up at the moment for the top end Vid iPod (converting everything into £'s):

UK Price .. £259
USA price .. £179

So the UK "gullable" Tax is £80 ($156) over the top of the USA price. Add this to the top end 8GB iPhone (cos that's what I would be looking at) $599+$156 = $755 = £387

Now factor this in. Just before Christmas I upgraded my phone from a K750i to a K800i with Orange and signed a new 12 month agreement. It cost me nothing because of the plan I'm on. A Pay-as-you-go K800i from Orange (no contract) costs £220 ($428) so we can assume that is the cost they are prepared to bear to secure my annual renewal.

£387-£220 = £108 .. so I'm expecting to pay £108 minimum when I'm eligible to upgrade again next christmas. However, this doesn't factor in the true cost of the iPhone to the carriers. I believe the $599 price is already discounted by Cingular though by how much I don't know. So I might get charged a bit more than that. They could charge me up to the value of the equivalent Vid iPod (£259) except for one thing. I renew my contract and upgrade my phone with Orange every year. I will not renew it every year if I'm going to stung with a £259 "tax" for the privilege of getting the latest iPhone. What I'll do instead is look at the other service providers to see where I can get an iPhone on a new customer deal for less money. So the Mobile Telco's are going to have to be very careful how they play this one.

Hope you're not too confused after that ;-)

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Fred Ferrigno]

See, the $499/$599 US figures require a 2 year contract with Cingular. They haven't announced a price for the iPhone without contract and it seems it won't be available at all without one. Therefore, that £387 figure already includes the presumed service provider discount. The "real" cost without contract, presuming you can buy it without one, would be somewhere in the neighborhood of £387+£220 = £607.

I will be very surprised if the iPhone-with-contract debuts in the UK for less than £350, and very, very surprised if it ever drops below £250.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Macka]

I will be very surprised if the iPhone-with-contract debuts in the UK for less than £350, and very, very surprised if it ever drops below £250

Yeah but there isn't a single contract phone price over here. It depends on the price plan of the contract you have. For example look at what Orange currently offer their existing customers. The most expensive phone they do for an upgrade contract is the Sony Ericsson W950i. You can look at shop.orange.co.uk and see for yourself. It has 4GB memory (they say up to 4,000 songs) and touch screen navigation so it's not that dissimilar to an iPhone and is one of the phones that Apple will be competing with. The upgrade price goes from £50-£250 depending on the contract you're on. I expect my contract puts me close to the £50 end of that.

Apple and the mobile telco's can only sell the iPhone at a price the market will bear. Expecting people with contracts like me who are used to paying £50 extra to get the best mobile phone Orange has to offer, to pay £250-£350 instead just doesn't cut it. Especially if that becomes an annual upgrade cost. It's going to have to be less than that, or alternatively the phone is going to have to last 2 years. If the UK version comes out with HSDPA support, then 2 years is a possibility.

Lastly, you also need to bear in mind that the UK mobile market is fiercely competitive. No single telco is going to get iPhone exclusivity over here, or the others would run screaming to the European Commission for breach of competition law. It's this competition between them that ensures UK customers get good deals. For example we've never had our phones bluetooth crippled, or been forced into 24 month contracts. And I think this will help to keep the iPhone price down too.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Fred Ferrigno]

The most expensive phone they do for an upgrade contract is the Sony Ericsson W950i. You can look at shop.orange.co.uk and see for yourself. It has 4GB memory (they say up to 4,000 songs) and touch screen navigation so it's not that dissimilar to an iPhone and is one of the phones that Apple will be competing with. The upgrade price goes from £50-£250 depending on the contract you're on. I expect my contract puts me close to the £50 end of that. And the iPhone is still much more expensive than the W950i. Without or any special deals, an unlocked W950i costs £387.99 direct from Sony Ericsson. In contrast, presuming you could buy an iPhone without contract, you might expect to pay upwards of £500-600. Even if you factor in a very generous contract discount, you're still in the range of £200-300.

Apple and the mobile telco's can only sell the iPhone at a price the market will bear. Expecting people with contracts like me who are used to paying £50 extra to get the best mobile phone Orange has to offer, to pay £250-£350 instead just doesn't cut it. The thing is, that's pretty much what Apple's trying to do in the US. £350 doesn't cut it in the UK, but $499 is equally ridiculous in the US. Customers are pretty much used to getting a phone free with service. Even the most expensive smartphones rarely crack $200 with a contract. Apple has priced the iPhone very, very high in the US and it's hard to imagine the situation being any different in the UK.

Basically, the reason I said the phone won't drop below £250 is because the iPod costs £259. Apple is apparently very concerned that the cell phones will cannibalize their iPod sales because the iPod's price doesn't include a service discount. You saw this with the Motorola iTunes phones, where they set an artificial cap on the number of songs to avoid competing with the Mini and shuffle. They want to price the iPhone as a set up from the iPod, not a replacement.

that was "step up" not "set up" -- nt

[Fred Ferrigno]

They want to price the iPhone as a step up from the iPod, not a replacement.

Re:Mono, what? Poly or something?

[Macka]

It's going to be real interesting to watch this over the next year and see how it all pans out. Part of me hopes there's enough profit margin for them to maneuver on the price to find the sweet spot. Another part of me thinks that Apple are not stupid and must've done their market research and be convinced they can do it at this price. Yet another part of me thinks, dam, this is such a hot device I'll sell my aging parents for spare parts and buy it anyway ;-)

Perhaps they're pricing it so high because they want to:

• establish the iPhone as a luxury (desirable) item in the minds of consumers
• artificially restrict demand until they can ramp up production volumes

Then sometime later they'll announce price drops and stoke up product demand.

Well anyway, thanks for the chat. It's been nice talking to you about this. Take care.