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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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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.
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.
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?