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Can Apple Find a European iPhone Partner?
pete314 writes "A Vnunet.com article claims that European mobile operators are unwilling to concede to Apple iPhone partnership demands. Several operators went as far as to say they 'will never offer the iPhone.' In the US, Verizon reportedly passed on the device, and AT&T is rumored to have engaged in a revenue-sharing deal that includes monthly payments to Cupertino." In Europe, unlike in the US, Apple has the option of selling the iPhone through its own dealer network without a simlock.
This is not an option for the US market because several providers do not use Sim cards, and because operators use different network standards that prevent the iPhone working on some networks. Hard to tell whether the author was confused or just wrong. All the GSM providers in the US use SIM cards, because that's how GSM works. Different operators do use different network standards (mainly CDMA), but GSM is GSM no matter who's providing it. There's nothing stopping Apple from selling the iPhone directly to consumers and saying "You need a SIM card to make this work, so go get one from Cingular, T-Mobile, or somewhere else."
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No. Yes, this is an "employee Q&A", but this does not mean that the phone just isn't "further" subsidized for "employees" - I don't even know how you get that. It means the iPhone is not subsidized, period. The only thing the words subsidy and subsidized even refer to in the wireless industry is price reductions in exchange for contracts, not for employee discounts. The entire Q&A is for employees dealing with customers, customer questions, and AT&T's direction for iPhone, not for employee purchase issues for iPhone. That's why it also says an existing AT&T customer can purchase iPhone for the same price as a new customer: the iPhone isn't subsidized.
The cell phone companies of course see the same thing happening with the iPhone. Apple does not always play be industry "wink wink nudge nudge'rules. It has had a big part in validating digital music delivery, and, for better or worse, we will see those deliveries be uninfected with DRM. What will the iphone do to the mobile phone industry. Render meaningless the contracts by which a phone user must use a certain service for email. Allow users to create thier own ring tones, as can already be done using a Mac and some cell phones. Nip in the bud the profitable music downloads over celluar networks before it even generates any significant revenue. Force major upgrades in bandwidth. Are the Europeans afraid that the iPhone will somehow undermine their excessive roaming charges? The United States, at twice the area, has inexpensive roam free plans, despite the relative backwater mobile technology.
Apple is pretty good about delivering disruptive technology. I am sure the only reason that ATT made the deal was to remain competitive with Verizon. I can't imagine it was a happy decision for them. I wonder if there is enough competition in the EU to force a carrier to do the same.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I believe you know much about the technical aspect of GSM, and yes GSM is a standard. However, that doesn't mean a GSM-compliant phone can connect to any mobile carriers without prior agreements.
For example, you cannot make a GSM-compliant phone and then plug your GSM SIM into it and talk. You simply couldn't connect to the carrier, they'd just reject to connect to your unrecognized mobile phone, unless you as a "mobile manufacturer" striked a deal with them in advance.
The mobile carriers must recognize your mobile phone for your GSM SIM to work, they won't let any other mobile from manufacturers without deals with them. That's one of the revenue sources of mobile carriers and you just can't refuse to comply.
They wrongs with the whole iPhone thing is that Jobs was rather new to this business and he shouldn't have push iPhone to the market prior to striking deals with mobile carriers. Since you've put iPhone into manufacturing, accepted orders and marketed it already, mobile carriers know you've little left to bargain on the table but to comply with their unfavourable terms of deals, like the nonesense about paying monthly bills. Apple has nothing to bargain at this stage but to accept them.
Apple will learn next time.
It's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The cell carriers have been squeezing the phone manufacturers for years, discounting the hardware to get customers locked in for 1-2 years. This has had the effect of people thinking of phones as "free" or "cheap"
Last phone I got was through Amazon. Why? Because it was almost $100 less than the same phone right from the carrier with the same plan. After rebates it cost me negative money ( not counting service ). How does Amazon do this? They get a cut for each customer they get to sign up or extend service. So the carriers are making the hardware look cheap and slipping money to the retailer.
This is part of the reason people said Apple was nuts to make a cell phone, the manufacturers have been getting squeezed for years. Apple instead said no, no discounts and they want the kickback for new contracts. The carriers have been making tons of money in the long run and Apple wants a piece of the action.
In reality, they don't need a partner. Europe has even more MVNOs than the U.S. They could buy minutes in bulk and sell the phones themselves. They may not want to, but they could.
A partner also isn't necessary for visual voicemail. All of these phones have internet access. I already use a 3rd party for my cell phone voicemail since it provides more features ( YouMail.com ) I have the option to get an SMS when I have voicemail that tells me who the message was from, and have it delivered via email as well as the indicator on my phone. It would not be hard for Apple to do the voicemail part themselves, independent of the carrier.
So the whole article is BS. By choosing GSM Apple has a phone than can be used in more countries than any other, and enabled with a new carrier just by slipping in a new SIM. By going with GSM they're out of the Broadcom/Qualcomm fight as well.
Sorry, that's just not so. I bought an unlocked Treo 650, stuck in my T-Mobile SIM (and T-Mobile does NOT offer the 650) and it Just Worked (tm) - like GSM is supposed to do.
iPhone is GSM. Verizon is CDMA. I don't think Verizon is going to see much in the way of iPhone business anytime soon.
As far as Apple arrogance goes, I can actually almost picture Apple telling Verizon, "We'd love for you to be our exclusive iPhone partner in the U.S.! There are a few conditions. First, we require you to switch your network over to GSM..."
Look again. http://www.flickr.com/photos/koenkooi/412593301/
While the consumer Neo1973 phones aren't shipping, calling it vaporware is a bit of a stretch, there are a healthy number of developer units out there, including some that are near-identical to the pending commercial release hardware. Read carefully at http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973 and you'll see that the phones are being produced by FIC , a fairly large Chinese electronics manufacturer who initiated the project. The software stack (a nice scalable gtk on linux environment), while missing some applications and features, is basically complete, and can be run in an emulator on the PC or on a few ARM platforms which are currently available. So. Its' not quite shipping yet, but a hefty Chinese corporation is vested in the project, and a truly impressive amount of work is already done and out there to look through. Weather either platform (iPhone/OpenMoko) takes off depends on the market, and its too early to say if either one has a chance of long term success. Who knows, one of these things might actually make me decide my featureless clamshell could be improved upon. (also remember, the US cellphone market is not in any way representative, and the phone market in Asia is far larger and more diverse than in the US or even Europe.)
Oh, really?
T-Mobile UK charges £20 (~$40)
T-Mobile US charges the same $40 for 1000 minutes. You can make free calls at night and on the weekend. There's a 24-month contract when you buy a phone.
So, we're paying the same amount, but we're getting more than 5x as many minutes. Yes, we pay for incoming calls, but unless you recieve more than 4x as many calls as you make, you still come out ahead.
We pay less for text messages, less for GPRS, and we don't pay to call customer care. We also don't pay to roam anywhere in the US, which is 4x larger than Western Europe and just as populous.
We're getting screwed. But Europeans are getting screwed way, way more. The funny thing is that they don't seem to realize it - and they somehow believe that we're getting the short end of the stick.
My family is on a "family" plan. We pay $60/mo for three phones (about $25/mo per line), and although we only get 500 peak minutes, we make more than 6000 minutes of calls in a typical month. How? We don't pay to call each other (or anyone on the same provider, for that matter), and we don't pay to call at night or on the weekends.
You know what's even crazier? It's cheaper for me to make or recieive a call from France (99c/min) than it is for someone who has T-Mobile UK (55p/min).
Warped? Not exactly.
It's worse than you think.
The iPhone is a GPRS/EDGE device. EDGE can do 20KB/s in the best case, and 15KB/s is more typical.
Guess what, though? There's no EDGE in most of Europe. UMTS got popular before EDGE was really developed. So the iPhone "breakthrough internet device" can do 5-7KB/s in most of Europe. It's as fast as dial-up with 3x the latency!
And, you know what? The iPhone is pretty pathetic by US standards, even. Most smart devices have EVDO (~1-2 Mbps) or HSDPA (yes, we have it). Even the $79 Blackjack has UMTS/HSDPA. So does the free RAZR.
ATT/Cingular may not have great UMTS coverage, but it's improving quickly. Cingular already has HSDPA in the San Jose area (where I am from the summer), and they'll have it in the Denver area by the end of the summer. Even T-Mobile, who only got the spectrum to deploy 3G last December, will have UMTS/HSDPA running nationally by 2009.
The iPhone should have launched with HSDPA/UMTS. Period. There is no excuse for not having it when the "free" phones that Jobs so loves to trash doesn't. The iPhone cannot be a "revolutionary interent device" when it has data capabilities inferior to phones that are 5x cheaper and launched 6 months ago.
My Dash has GPRS/EDGE and WiFi. It has 2GB of storage, it has the full web (with Opera), it plays music and movies (including WMA/MP3/AAC/Vorbis and XVID/DIVX/H.264/MPEG1/MPEG2/WMV), it has HTML mail, and it even has a keyboard.
My phone came out 9 months ago and is 10 TIMES cheaper than the iPhone. For the $450 less that my phone costs, you could buy TWO 30GB video iPods. Or 40GB of microSD memory cards.
The UI had better be pretty damned good.
In Scandinavia, you generally pay less than $0.20 a minute, text messages are $0.10, and the concept of "allowance" is not that common. I checked out the lowest cost offering for 500 minutes/month, and with that you pay $0.10 a minute, $0.10 per text message and there is no monthly fee. This includes a "family" plan, so that you can designate up to 5 numbers that are using the same operator and have all those numbers call each other for free. We don't pay for receiving calls (except when roaming), what a ridicolous concept.
So, yes, you are being screwed (and it seems that that goes for both Americans and UKers).
Complete bluff from start to finish. These is no such phone model type blocking on GSM. If a particular phone hasn't worked for you with a valid SIM, it's because that particular phone is locked to another network. NOT that the phone type is rejected as being unknown.
The only good news is that the EU is about to come down on them all like a ton of bricks...
I use T-mobile in the UK. I pay nothing per month. I have no contract. I pay $0.20/min for the calls I make, $0.10 for the texts I send, nothing for the calls I receive. When I use the net the amount I pay is capped at $2 for the day. I have 3G coverage at home (semi-rural). I do not pay for MP3 ringtones because I download them into the phone from my Macbook. The Bluetooth on my phone has not been disabled by the operator.
Am I being screwed then?
I work in Europe these last 7 years in the Mobile Portal Space, and I have never seen anyone try to lock out a phone at the network level. Once it has a valid SIM.....it works. We have NO idea what phones are out there, and if mobile operators were doing this, they would lock out their own customers, because marketing never talks to the network guys, they just do stuff. In any case all operators sell SIM only contract.......so contractually how would we explain to them that we are locking THEIR phone out. Governments and the GSM association validate phones. Mobile Operators assume phones are legal and will work.
I am racking my brains and too lazy to troll via the standards, but I SUSPECT that even f there is a part of the GSM spec to validate a certain phone model it is never used.
So in your wisdom specify your source for this ( I have worked for Vodafone Global, Orange Global, Swisscom, BT Cellnet H3G etc etc etc)
In the Portal space, via a WAP gateway, we can reject this or that model of phone if we want. The theory of Vodafone Live is that only specific handsets can use the service, but some of the OpCo's let any handset in not just Vodfaone Live approved handsets.
A strong smell of bullshit emanates.
Because the US mobile phone market is completely wack. Coverage sucks and is highly varying and there are competing standards. Not competing carriers, competing *standards*. GSM and CDMA.
;)
They could sell it without SIM locking, and by Bob I hope they do it in Europe, but you'd only ever reach half of the market. My guess is that it's least suspicious to just do it the way things are usually done in the US - just tie it to a carrier. Nevermind the free market and stuff like that.