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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.
In the US, AT&T (Cingular) and T-Mobile are both GSM providers. Apple could have easily sold an unlocked phone to be used by those providers.
It would make sense for Apple to be cautious about their sales/after-sales care approach in the UK at least.
I say this as someone who bought a couple of upper-crust Nokias (price comparable to estimates of the iPhone's cost) a couple of years ago and had no end of problems. It isn't that the hardware sucked, though there were several design flaws, but it's not like Apple are immune from those. It wasn't even that the software sucked. It was the sheer level of bureaucratic incompetence related to every after-sales interaction. Guarantees that mysteriously lapse on the UK guarantee lookup system. Phones replaced by grey market alternatives shipped in from Saudi Arabia that mysteriously don't qualify under the warranty at all. It is almost entirely impossible to communicate with Nokia themselves. The 'Nokia Shop' system - the Nokia-branded vendor through which these things are bought - are actually Mobile Phones Direct and have no relationship with Nokia at all. And of course the operator from whom one bought the contract holds no apparent responsibility. All this is advantageous to them - call them and tell them your £450 phone has broken and they'll point out that it's just about time for you to renew your contract and, hey, you're eligible for a phone upgrade. It is not in their interest to support the one you've just spent eighteen months paying for.
If I were trying to sell an upmarket mobile phone, especially one as expensive as the iPhone is likely to be, I'd be desperately looking for a way to handle all this which wouldn't equate Apple with the open invitation to open a case with Trading Standards that is the UK mobile industry. For whatever reason, Apple currently have a fairly good name when it comes to expensive-but-neat gadgets. Nothing loses the customer's trust like trying to figure out who in the system of phone operators, retail outlets and repair centres is responsible for fixing a broken mobile.
If it's not obvious from the above I'm actually rather hoping that Apple do take some responsibility for this product; if they do I might be inclined to buy one just to give myself and Trading Standards a break. You know you've got a problem when you discover you've been put on Trading Standards' Christmas card list.
> And before anyone says that the iPhone is subsidized,
> therefore it must be a million dollars without a contract, you're wrong.
> Even though a two year contract with AT&T is required for iPhone in the US,
> the iPhone is not subsidized - the price is what it is.
My reading of the page is that the phone will not be subsidised *further* for their *employees* - ie there will not be any discount if you work for them and they have to pay the same as anyone else.
I do *not* read that as implying that the phone's price is not reduced in exchange for committing to a 2 year contract.
Did I miss something?
Max.
I know a lot of people think the lack of 3G is killer, but 3G doesn't cover much of the nation yet. Granted, they have coverage in many major metro areas, but I don't think it's broad enough yet. Thus, Apple probably felt like it was acceptable to not do 3G at the beginning. In fact, there may have been multiple reasons: there may be a different data package for iPhone, and AT&T might not mind "testing the waters" a bit. The inclusion of WiFi also obviates the need for 3G coverage for many people. Personally, I live in a city that probably won't have 3G coverage from AT&T for a long time, so I, like many others, couldn't even get it if we wanted. I disagree with people who think everything is about planned obsolescence, and that this is a screw-job on consumers designed to gip early adopters and force people to buy new phones when a 3G-capable iPhone becomes available. While I'm sure Apple won't shed any tears if people buy new iPhones, I highly doubt that was even a marginal reason for 3G's omission in the first generation.
So, in summary: would it be cool if the first gen iPjone had 3G? Of course. But with WiFi and considering the relatively limited AT&T 3G coverage in the US for the time being, I don't see it as the massive problem some others do. I don't think it will negatively impact the majority of iPhone early adopters, and those who feel they need 3G can certainly wait
If people knew what their phones were capable of, what the cell companies are denying them, it'd be blood in the water.
The US phone industry is incredibly warped with respect to the rest of the world, doing things that nobody else would put up with.
Why we put up with it is a mystery to me.
The ______ Agenda
I know a lot of people think the lack of 3G is killer, but 3G doesn't cover much of the nation yet.
We're talking about the European market, where 3G is practically universal and wifi is relatively rare. It might not hurt Apple in the USA, where things are different, but it's a killer in Europe.
...Jobs expects to get out of the deal other than a middling, short-term income stream*. Because I think we all know that this is just the opening salvo of his grand plan to take a sizeable chunk of the handset market with an entire iPhone series, and with that in mind, I think that once the novelty of an Apple cellphone wears off (say after the iPhone 2 and/or the 'iphone nano'), the service provider/s will come banging on his door, possibly with an axe to grind, threatening that unless the 'revenue-sharing' stops, their new-found income will cease all together, and Apple will have to just quietly slink back to being 'Apple Computers Inc.'. Now wouldn't *that* be funny.
;P
*I say a "middling, short-term income stream" because I do think that, as great as the iPhone is, it doesn't know its market; it's too big to be a glomour phone yet it doesn't have the features to be a business phone, it's "market-confused", if you will
But their just my theories, feal free to counter-theorize.
All Apple has to do is wait until June 30th. When word that iPhones can't be restocked fast enough to meet demand, European carriers will be contacting Steve Jobs' office willing to deal.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Openmoko seems to be more of a standard than an actual, purchasable device. How about if we compare apples to apples; vaporware should treated as such.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
American mobile-phone technology is five, maybe seven years behind Europe and Asia. Features which are acceptable in the USA (e.g., EDGE, simlocks, contract-locked Wi-fi, etc) are so archaic as to provoke spontaneous laughter when described to non-US mobile users. Just look at the terminology -- fully half* the phone users outside the USA would have no idea what a "cellular" phone is. It's a mobile phone. Mobile across networks, user SIMS, and national borders.
The simple fact that the parent post asks rhetorically "would it be cool if the first-gen Iphone had 3G?" amazes me. Jesus, is it still 2002 in the USA or something? If Apple takes that attitude to Europe it'll get laughed at. And it is.
* figure invented on the spot
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Duke Nukem Forever is vaporware. Though it is late, the Neo1973 is certainly not vaporware. See http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/weblog/2007/06/15/
It's true, but who cares? What's the big deal?
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Yeah I read about that, the iPhone doesn't have UMTS/HSPA support, only GSM/GPRS. How could they overlook such an important feature? Is UMTS coverage that low in the US? I don't think they'll have much success in Europe until they get out of the stone age and offer support for modern 3G networks.
Really, I thought that 3G was basically a flop in the UK so far, and that after 3 initially tried to tout the benefits of fast data: 'woo football highlights and movie trailers on your phone' they basically had to give up and resort to 'woo really cheap phone calls'.
I think I'd rather the person calling me picked up the tab. They are calling me at their convenience not mine.
Better flight searching coming soon.
This actually proves my point. This kind of technology (mobile telephones) was prevalent in the US long before it was anywhere else in the world.
Actually, while Motorola and AT&T invented the Cellular telephony technology, your FCC kept the technology from being implemented for a crapload of time. It took a phone call from Ronald Reagan to take them out of their eternal sleep. Meanwhile, Japan and Northern Europe already had implemented their own cellular networks.
Please, believe me, the mobile phones around in Europe would kick the iPhone's ass. Go to Finland for example and show your shiny iPhone to a person there and they'll ask you a few things:
1. Does it have 3G
2. Does it have a Card Slot so I can expand it's memory?
3. Can you create REAL applications that will run on it?
4. Does it have GPS?
5. Can you change the damn battery when (not if, but WHEN) its life is over?
What exactly does your beloved iPhone do? besides allowing me to touch a large screen with two fingers at the same time? Everything else is technology that was available in mainstream Mobile Phones 3 years ago.
As everyone knows you can't answer yes to any of the above questions. So at that point, the Finnish guy will take out his shiny N-Series Nokia Smartphone (with a REAL Operating System, with REAL applications, a REAL SDK and a lot of freedon to offer) and tell you to go stick your iPhone where the sun don't shine, because it's the only thing he would think about doing with it.
In it's current state, the iPhone cannot succeed in Europe, and it's not about the price, because it's a normal price for a Smartphone. The only problem is that the iPhone IS NOT A SMARTPHONE, and if Apple continue to not look at what the established mobile phone businesses are doing IT WILL NEVER BE ONE.
From a European point of view, I cannot see the fuzz about Apple's iPhone. It's just a standard phone, but with a touch-screen. Nothing more. All other European models (Sony Ericsson, Nokia etc) have plans for feature-rich phones like iPhone. I do understand that this is a big deal in the US, where crippled cell phones have mostly been sold (just standard phones with SMS and some WAP-services). Let's face it. The US is _way behind_ when it comes to mobile phones.