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.

Comments

Answer: yes

[daveschroeder]

...or, they don't need to.

And before anyone says that we "don't know" whether the iPhone has a user-accessible SIM tray, yes, we do.

And yes, iPhone will work on any GSM carrier; that's the whole purpose of standards like GSM, and iPhone is a GSM phone. Network-specific functionality (such as visual voicemail) will not work, but the phone and basic voicemail functionality, data functionality, etc., will absolutely work.

When Apple is ready to launch iPhone in Europe - it has previously said Q4 2007 - I have no doubt they'll be launching it, whether it's with one partner or multiple, or Apple makes some compromises to make a deal happen.

I also take issue with the article's claim, regurgitated in the summary, that selling iPhone without a simlock is "not an option" in the US. Several phone manufacturers

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.

And mobile operators calling Apple arrogant? How amusing. Also, I have another idea: how about people stop predicting the doom of the iPhone before it's even out yet?

Re:Answer: yes

[dwater]

> 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?

Re:Answer: yes

[daveschroeder]

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

Re:Answer: yes

[daveschroeder]

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.

Re:Answer: yes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Answer: yes

[daveschroeder]

Cool. So Apple is targeting consumers who are outside of major urban areas, and isn't so interested in people who live in NY, SF, Seattle, Dallas, etc. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but at least it's a viable theory.

1. I didn't say that.

2. Your statement ignores the fact that massive numbers of people are in fact outside of 3G coverage.

3. Large numbers of people in major metro areas will still purchase iPhone, and WiFi will also mitigate the need for 3G for a lot of people. Those who really need 3G in a handheld device don't have to get an iPhone.

4. Obviously, future generations of iPhone will have added functionality. Apple has already said 3G is coming in the future.

Now will you explain why you don't want MMS or GPS either?

1. I never use MMS, and all the people saying that MMS is mandatory and "everyone uses it" are high, because I have never used it, and no one I know uses it. And this is on a major university campus. So that doesn't impact me at all. Also, I'd use email or iPhoto for all photo management from an iPhone.

2. I wish it did have GPS. It doesn't. I guess I get to weigh the pros vs. cons when making a purchasing decision? My current phone (Palm Treo 700p) doesn't have GPS either, nor do many PDA phones. Should we get upset about all of those, too? Why don't those have GPS?

The way I see it, the iPhone is basically a modern iPod duct taped to a state of the art cell phone from 2004.

Ignoring the ignorance of your comment, I'd just say, "Good thing buying one isn't mandatory, then." No one's forcing you to buy one.

Re:Answer: yes

[Simon Garlick]

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

Re:Answer: yes

[Emor dNilapasi]

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.

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.

Re:Answer: yes

[digitalchinky]

>>> This is due in large part to geographic size, and the nature of the marketplace as mobile telephone services were rolled out in the United States.

No, it isn't. Take a look at how the service providers hack away and restrict firmware on any remotely modern handset. Restricting things like wifi, bluetooth, file transfers over cable, hell, probably even infra-red, this has absolutely nothing to do with services that were rolled out in the past. It has everything to do with making more money from existing infrastructure.

Take a look at how many 'billions' of dollars the telco's were able to cough up when buying spectrum. The limitations are fully artificial. The US is indeed lagging several years behind most other countries when it comes to mobile communications. Here in the Philippines the entire country is covered with all the latest little GSM acronyms. A country which you US types have a tendency to refer to as '3rd world' There might be the odd bit of corruption here (sarcasm), but it is most definitely a country with 1st world amenities and technology throughout.

Re:Answer: yes

[Angostura]

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'.

Re:Answer: yes

[mr_matticus]

Yeah, you missed something. This is a training/reference document, not an internal sales bulletin. As you can see by reading the document (or hell, even the excerpts), these are the answers to questions that customers would be asking, providing an official answer for sales representatives to use. iPhone hardware is not subsidized by AT&T because Apple wouldn't let them. Whether that is Apple arrogance or a brilliant attempt to expose cell phone pricing scams remains to be seen.

My fear is that the plan price will be comparable to any other data device, but without the benefit of a portion of that monthly bill being sent back to the manufacturer to pay the artificially low price of the handsets.

Re:Answer: yes

[BasilBrush]

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.

Re:Answer: yes

[adinu79]

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.

Re:Answer: yes

[kevinbr]

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.

Huh?

[thammoud]

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.

Oops, forgot to finish a sentence

[daveschroeder]

"I also take issue with the article's claim, regurgitated in the summary, that selling iPhone without a simlock is "not an option" in the US. Several phone manufacturers..."

should go on to read:

Several phone manufacturers offer unlocked GSM phones in the US that will work with any GSM carrier. There's no reason Apple couldn't do this anywhere, including Europe, and the US (after its rumored 5-year exclusive deal with AT&T is over).

Given the competition...

[garoo]

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.

Re:Given the competition...

[jimicus]

I think that's as much a function of Nokia's engineering approach ("put the fancy new experimental features in the expensive phones few people buy, then iron them out for the cheaper phones which sell by the million") than anything else, and is not really how Apple tend to work.

The experience you discuss in sorting it out is just typical of UK customer service within the mobile phone industry. Just like their fixed-line counterparts, mobile phone networks are run by a bunch of arrogant tossers whose attitude is "We don't care. We don't have to. Everyone else is just as bloody awful so there's precious little point in you going elsewhere."

And the whole idea of the "service provider" - does that exist in the US? - whereby you have an operator who runs the network but they don't actually deal with the customer directly - the customer has to go through a service provider. Absolutely nuts. The only reason I can think of for it existing as a concept is to make the industry more complicated.

The article is misinformed.

[Mr2001]

Here's the relevant quote from TFA:

If Apple decided to sell the iPhone directly to consumers, it would have to sell the devices without simlock, allowing the buyer to insert their own Sim card.

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."

Re:The article is misinformed.

[Eponymous Crowbar]

That was revealed at WWDC. But that info could be US-centric since that is the only market currently set to get the iPhone. Maybe the details would be different in other areas.

Re:The article is misinformed.

[Reaperducer]

It's true, but who cares? What's the big deal?

Doesn't matter How much they'd make

[Deliveranc3]

If people knew what their phones were capable of, what the cell companies are denying them, it'd be blood in the water.

Re:haha

[Simon80]

This device is far more deserving of any such hype. It has bluetooth, a GPS receiver, wifi, twice as many pixels on its touchscreen, and it runs on an entirely free platform (which is thus open for third party devevlopment). All of this for $350, with no service contract.

Secret moral of the story:

[cgenman]

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.

Re:Secret moral of the story:

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

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.

Oh, really?

T-Mobile UK charges £20 (~$40) /mo for a £34 "allowance", good for up to 170 minutes (20p/min) or 340 text messages (10p each). You can make free calls on the weekend. There's an 18 month contract.

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.

Re:Secret moral of the story:

[Ullteppe]

The T-Mobile UK example sounds horribly expensive compared to Scandinavian prices. I don't know the UK market that well, so I can't say whether you managed to pick the worst offering in all of Europe or whether the UK market is more expensive than Europe as a whole.

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).

Re:Secret moral of the story:

[nicklott]

The UK market is horrendously expensive compared to, as far as I can work out, the whole of the rest of the world, particularly when it comes to data. I saw some Scandawegian data tariffs quoted on here a few days ago and, apart from an all-you-can-eat tariff simply not being available here, it was an order of magnitude cheaper. When I looked last year for my company the cheapest data tarif I could find was ~£100/month for 20Mb of data with overages at £10/Mb! Looking now they've dropped a load in a year, but I'm not surprised as no-one can have been buying it at those rates. I assume they justify it because they paid billions for the 3G licenses, but 3G is only accessible in large cities and no is going to use it at those prices anyway. It's like one of the world's biggest companies doesn't understand the basic laws of supply and demand.

The only good news is that the EU is about to come down on them all like a ton of bricks...

Non-mystery science theater 3,000

[Duncan3]

iPhone: $3,000 in 24 easy installments, after a 600$ down payment.

F' you AT&T!

Operators are arrogant too

[gilesjuk]

In the UK the network operators like to bastardise the phone as they see fit. Rebranding, removing features and often ruining the phone. With Windows smartphones they often remove MSN messenger and any VOIP software.

Does it need to find a partner?

[Aphrika]

Does Apple really need a partner in Europe? Sure, it'd be nice to have one, but the iPhone would happily sit at the high-end of the smartphone range with the N95 in pricing if supplied SIM-free. Ok, so you wouldn't get provider stuff such as visual voicemail, but you'd get 99% of the functionality. However, I don't think it would look too appealing - you can get a lot more phone for your money at N95 prices...

And I know I'll get shot down for this, but I'm still not getting the whole iPhone vibe thing at all. It's a phone with a touchscreen. It doesn't have 3G, it has a pretty average camera and overall, it's a pretty bog-standard smartphone. Symbian and Windows Mobile devices have been out for ages, are well established with thousands of software titles, work well with corporate systems and are generally more feature-complete. In that sense, a lot of European carriers are probably wondering what the hell all the fuss is about.

Granted the iPhone has the whole iPod/iTunes thing going for it which I kinda like, but I'd wait until that touchscreen finds its way into a standalone iPod. While I'd like the iPhone to succeed, feature for feature, version 1 has already been surpassed here by the likes of the Nokia N95 and the Sony Ericsson W960i. :o(

Re:Does it need to find a partner?

[skrolle2]

Ok, so you wouldn't get provider stuff such as visual voicemail, You can drop the "such as", the iPhone has no other feature that requires a special deal with the provider. Everything else it can do is standard GSM.

I Don't Quite Understand What...

[distantbody]

...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.

*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 ;P

But their just my theories, feal free to counter-theorize.

closed system

[fermion]

There was a time, not so long ago, that one could only hook up a certified ATT phone to you ATT landline. While this was clearly partially due to a issues related to the network, after a while it had more to do with monthly rental fees paid on these phones. After a while the government said enough was enough, and we now have the opportunity to plug any phone we want into the jacks. This, along with other factors, killed the profitability of the industry.

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.

Enough already

[Anonymous Coward]

Every fuckin' day there are at least two "news stories" about the iPhone here. I guess on June 29th Slashdot will become iPhone.org. Hasn't Sourceforge tired of the the taste of Jobs' nuts yet?

Apple just has to wait a couple weeks

[ktappe]

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.

Re:Apple just has to wait a couple weeks

[cuby]

Mobile carriers don't need Apple to do business. I live in a country with 112 mobile phones per 100 people and almost anyone has a phone costing more than 300 euros. Also, phone unlocking is even more pervasive than file sharing. Apple is lucky if they manage to get even a 5% share... That's nothing.

Re:Apple just has to wait a couple weeks

[suv4x4]

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.

Carriers aren't in the business to resell phones. Phones are just the means they use to sel their service.

European carries want you to buy their 3G connection and video capabilities.

Every sold iPhone means one more customer who won't buy their 3G service. And incidentally, because of the price of this device, it's exactly the people who'd buy 3G who'd buy the iPhone.

iPhone means bad business for European carriers, this is why they don't want to have anything to do with it.

Re:Apple just has to wait a couple weeks

[drsquare]

Why would they want to do a deal with a manufacturer that can't keep up demand? The European mobile phone market is pretty saturated, carriers won't make money on phones that don't exist.

Re:haha

[ktappe]

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.

I don't think it will be sold SIM-free

[SeaFox]

In Europe, unlike in the US, Apple has the option of selling the iPhone through its own dealer network without a simlock.

Wouldn't this make AT&T's "exclusive" distribution agreement written on toilet paper? Everyone who didn't want get a long contract or use AT&T would just get the iPhone imported from Europe.

A more interesting question would be what Apple is going to do in those countries where it is illegal to lock a phone to a network or require a contract for it.

If there's going to be any "revolution" in the cell phone industry caused by the iPhone, it's how business is done U.S. cellular industry when the rest of the world is entirely different. I can't believe we still have to pay for incoming calls in the U.S.

Re:I don't think it will be sold SIM-free

[dazzla_2000]

I think I'd rather the person calling me picked up the tab. They are calling me at their convenience not mine.

iMslow

[kosmosik]

Rumors say that iPhone does ~25KBps on data connection. This really sucks. 3.5G network is really spread in Europe so with iPhone's pathetic ~25KBps (I easly 200KBps with my phone and laptop right now) bandwith is not really attractive for retailers in Europe. Well this is hardly a "Breakthrough Internet Device" isn't it?

Maybe next version could manage do something sane.

I mean for networks in Europe the main selling point right now is data transfer. It is like revolution - real mobile Internet. Well iPhone does not catch that. People everywhere here use phones (via their laptops) to access Internet. You have like plenty of billboards, press adverts, TV commercials focusing on GSM data transfer abilities.

Well lets see what iPhone can do... uhm... it can do phone calls and text messaging - hmm. Like any other phone really. It is not a selling point. Right now in Poland (at belive me - it is not the most advanced country in Europe) the selling point is 4Mbps data transfer.

So concluding - there is not a market (beside of really small fashion accessory one) for iPhone unless it can work as all other phones on the market (do HDSPA and modern data transfer).

Re:iMslow

[SwedishPenguin]

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.

Re:haha

[Simon80]

Duke Nukem Forever is vaporware. Though it is late, the Neo1973 is certainly not vaporware. See http://gnumonks.org/~laforge/weblog/2007/06/15/

Apple Arrogant? Cell carriers would know

[MDMurphy]

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.

Think about it the other way

[melted]

Cell phone company is going to get $600-1000 out of you per year regardless of what phone you own. You might as well own a good one. I'd much rather see them stop subsidizing phones altogether if I get unlimited voice for $20 a month and unlimited voice+data at $35. That, unfortunately, won't happen. Evar.

Re:HAHA, nice product name!

[Simon80]

Actually, see this:

At this point, we should tell you why we chose the name "Neo1973." "Neo" means new. Dr. Marty Cooper (the inventor of the mobile phone) made the first call ever in 1973.

We believe that an open source mobile phone can revolutionize, once again, the world of communication. This will be the New 1973.

Prediction

[Frankie70]

If the iPhone gets launched at a 500$+ price point
in Europe, it would be a huge flop. This phone can
be a hit in Europe only if Apple reduces the price
by 25% atleast & sells it unlocked. The US is the
only place where such an expensive locked phone
can possibly sell huge numbers. But this time I
think even in the US, iPhone is not going to be
a huge hit - at best it would be a moderate success
at current price levels.

Re:Of course they did...

[pweent]

they know that anyone will be able to dump their contracts with AT&T and Verizon will be there to offer ex AT&T iPhone customers with a competitive deal without having to make any concessions to Apple.

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..."

Re:haha: FAKER ALERT!

[Simon80]

Oh, I'm sorry, you couldn't figure out whether or not that blog is real, so obviously it must be a fake. See http://planet.openmoko.org/

OpenMoko Exists

[PAPPP]

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.)

Not another iPhone story

[plusser]

A few truths:-

1. If you go to Tokoyo, you will find most people walking round with a 3G/4G phone in one hand and an ipod in the other. The iPod has massive market penetration in Japan; the iPhone will when lanuched in Japan will have a large potential market. However, the previous generation of mobile phones (i.e. those before 3G) are totally incompatible with GSM. This is the main reason while the Asian market will have to wait until the battery technology improves.

2. 3G phones are still massive in size and have poor battery consumption when compared with GSM, hence the 3G version of the Mototrola V3 RAZR is almost twice the thickness of the GSM version. Europeans have a tendancy to go for smaller, more stylish phones, hence market penetration of 3G phones is fairly low. There are older members of the European population that like bigger phones, but they also don't like lots of technical functions; they are not in the market for an iPhone.

3. Most of the rest of the World have GSM, but 3G support is not consistent.

4. There are many phone users in European countries that now use pay as you go phone packages. This is because of the stupid attitude of mobile phone operators with regard to roaming charges for different countries; something the EU has recently tried to resolve. As the people whom are likely to buy an iPhone in Europe are likely to be those that travel a lot, having an unlocked phone will probably be a competitive advantage.

5. If I select an ISP, for my broadband connection, why should I be restricted to which model of computer I should use? Surely it is much better to buy a phone and then buy a contract for data/phone calls separately?

Re:another data point

[Ilgaz]

I've never sent a picture message, nor received one. I know one bloke who has for sure, may be 2 or 3 others who have. No one uses it regularly. In Europe there are millions (if not billions already) MMS messages which are sent daily. It is the most easy and guaranteed way to send a small photo or even sound to your recipient.

My provider (Turkcell) uses MMS technology for voice messages. When you enable it, the voice messages you receive are "pushed" to your phone instead of dialing anything or mess with buttons. They also use it with service partners to send premier league goals almost realtime via 3G video files.

I guess the reason why Apple doesn't include MMS and it is really shame for my platform of choice.

Re:haha

[mjjw]

As I'm not from the US - can someone please explain to me why Apple could not sell the device without sim-locking through its stores out there?

From a European point of view

[fluor2]

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.

Huh?

[kt0157]

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?

There's more than T-Mobile USA to life

[theolein]

Here in Switzerland (where the prices are generally very high), Orange
In Germany, with T-Mobile, the plans don't charge for incoming calls and are quite competitive.

You did know that different Europeam countries have different tarifs, didn't you? and you did know that no one here charegs you for incoming calls?

Or was this just another yay USA pissing match?

(T-Mobile is a German company, btw)

Re:haha

[wootest]

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. ;)

Re:MMS

[LKM]

Here in holland all phones, except for the really cheap ones, are internet capable (just GPRS or GPRS + UMTS).

They sure are, but do you actually know anyone who uses that stuff? Watching TV on your cell phone is fun for 10 seconds, until you realize that you'll never, ever use that, ever again. Browsing the web is somewhat more useful, but you're going to use this so rarely, given the crappyness of pretty much all phone browsers and the mere cost of the experience, that the slower transfer rates don't really matter.