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AT&T Crippling BlackBerry for iPhone?
0xdeadbeef writes "BlackBerryCool got a tip that not only was AT&T removing GPS functionality from their version of the BlackBerry 8820, they're doing it so it won't show up the iPhone. While carriers crippling phones to stop them from competing with pay-per-use services is nothing new, this might be the first time they've done it to make their other products seem less diminished."
The new AT&T feels alot like the old AT&T.
Many carriers think they are a monopoly and don't want to have their low end rob the profit from the high end.
b lackberry-carrier-retailers-who-gets-it-and/
They are forgetting something. There is competition. They should strive to make all of their products and services more valuable to consumers.
Here is what we have so far..
1 An i-phone which is cool who's bill comes in a box shipped by UPS Oh and by the way is has a monopoly carrier.
2 A Blackberry. They are obtainable from several carriers, but AT&T cripples them worse than other carriers.
3 A Blackberry on another carrier.
4.. The rest of the market
If you avoid #1 due to the carrier issues and monster bills, you are now likely to avoid #2 for both the service and carrier reputation. Just what were they thinking? They don't hold a monopoly on Blackberries.
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I'm not so sure why AT&T would want to do this. Even though I wouldn't think that the iPhone and the Blackberry compete directly, at least prior to this decision AT&T sold one popular device with GPS functionality. Why they would change so that they now sell no devices (at the iPhone/Blackberry level) with GPS capabilities?
I could understand if Apple wanted this to happen... but how does this help AT&T? AT&T doesn't/shouldn't care if people are buying Blackberries over iPhones on the basis of GPS, so long as the Blackberry comes from AT&T. If they believed that GPS was the tipping point, those customers are now buying nothing from AT&T.
Doesn't seem so smart to me.
As long as carriers dictate what phones do or don't do, this is no big deal - it's just typical. I suspect the GPS functionality lockdown has nothing to do with iPhone, it's probably just that AT&T wants to sell their Telenav service and make money from it. The iPhone really doesn't compete in the same segment as Blackberries of any stripe, and they sell at a non-subsidized price - GPS or the lack thereof isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference in the Blackberry/iPhone purchase decision.
It's not like this is rare. Heck, Verizon's locked down the OBEX capabilities on most of their Bluetooth phones so they can sell their wireless sync service. Even Apple had to bite the bullet here - since there's no subsidy on the phone and Apple pockets all the money, don't you think they'd love to sell unlocked iPhones that would work on every GSM carrier? Or sell CDMA models through Verizon or Sprint? Of course they would. But to get AT&T to sell 'em and modify the network (build out EDGE capacity and add the Visual Voicemail system) they had to agree to a multi-year exclusivity deal.
So basically, the 8820 being modified because of Apple? I call BS. And if you want your Blackberry and you want it on AT&T, find yourself an unlocked version and just DIY. It's GSM, you can do that. It'll be unsubsidized, but at least that way it'll be a fair fight with the iPhone.
Wait - even though iPhone is unsubsidized it's still locked. Never mind!
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It isn't pretty in all of the rest of the world either. In latin america, all phones are locked to the carrier that provides them. While they don't cripple the phones as much as verizon (my v3 came with all features enabled), we can't choose carriers. GSM doesn't mean that the phone is free from carrier lockdown.
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I thought it was AT&T hindering the device not apple, so why do they need to be less paranoid?
Actually this all seems silly to me. Silly if true, I should say. I bought an iphone because I liked it, some other phone having gps isn't going to make me like it less.
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I live in America. I have an uncrippled phone, because I opted to buy my own. I could either buy an uncrippled phone, or let the telco subsidize my purchase, but they want to cripple the phone so I would end up paying more money in the long term. Ultimately, I decided that to replace my uncrippled phone with one crippled in ways I didn't care about, but that was superior in other ways.
Let's be clear, you can bitch about the loss of rights companies force on you. Just be prepared to pay full-price for those things. Alternatively, you can buy a phone where they cripple the bluetooth, just use USB to move things, and say, "Hey, bluetooth isn't worth $150 to me to buy an uncrippled version."
It's actually more freedom in the US.
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