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Apple Can't Afford iPhone's Carrier Exclusivity
WirePosted writes with an ITWire article about the problems that Apple's AT&T exclusivity deal could pose in the coming years. Initially the company needed AT&T's commitment to the project, to ensure features like visual voicemail would work. With the iPhone a hit even at its current high price that no longer seems to be the case. Can Apple afford to stick to an exclusive carrier in the future? If for no other reason than consumer choice? "iPhones are being sold unlocked in the markets of Asia where you can't get them with a carrier plan, but they're also being bought and unlocked in the US and Europe. The message is that many and probably most iPhone buyers would like to be given a choice of carrier when they buy their iPhone. Some would be prepared to pay more as they do with other smartphones and buy their iPhone unattached to any subsidized carrier contract. The point is many consumers feel no loyalty to carriers and resent being forced to choose one."
Why can't we have all phones free as in freedom? When I buy a computer I can hook it up to any TCP/IP network and access the internet. Some I pay for and some I don't. When I buy a land line phone, it isn't locked into any phone company. I can plug it into any jack and it works. All I want from my cell provider is a data pipe to get to the internet or the voice network. Period.
Steve Jobs wanted to change the way cell phones are bought but ended up just making so many annoying restrictions, even for customers that want to use AT&T/T-mobile/Orange that he ended up destroying the "simple" experience he so desired. He wanted people to be able to buy the phones directly from Apple without having to sign anything in store and/or online. However, when people started to unlock the phones Apple put in place tons of walls even for buyers that plan to use Apple's carrier. For example, you cannot buy iPhones with cash or Apple gift cards(in the states anyway). They announced this right before Christmas and many potential iPhone buyers already let it be known that they wanted Apple gift cards for Christmas so they could buy the iPhone. Instead, Apple just kicked them in the teeth.
What I don't understand is why, when Apple dropped the price, they didn't just make the price drop a subsidy for AT&T customers instead. They could have offered $200 off AT&T service after the first month that wasn't applicible to cancellation fees, and could have extended it to early adopters so they wouldn't have felt burned. Would have allowed Apple to drop the price to AT&T users(well, it would take a few months to see all the savings I suppose), and would have given Apple 50% more revenue from unlockers. But I think Steve was just so set against "subsidies" that he decided to take the "I'll do anything to prevent you from getting an unlocked iPhone" route instead. I think that costed Apple not only customers and revenue, but a LOT of goodwill too.....
Monstar L
"and then the ability to seamlessly activate via iTunes"
"Seamlessly"? You have to have a computer connected to the Internet just to activate your phone? That is so lame. There's a huge population of people, especially outside the US, who have mobile phones but not computers. I wonder what percentage of those un-activated iPhones were bought by people who didn't realize they had to mess with a PC just to turn the phone on.
And you still can't download music over the air link, can you?
It strikes me that the mobile networking situation in the US right now is what our wired Internet would be in had the greedy money-grubbing carriers been in charge of designing it. Your email would reside in central offices, and you would pay $1 to send or receive one (plus $1 per megabyte of attachments). The Web would be a set of AOL-like walled gardens with mutually incompatible content formats. Yay for VCASTrated YouTube! The scary part is that there were projects at former Bell Labs developing systems along that line under the PCS label. *shudder*
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Last week a guy from America was here in our Tokyo office and he wanted to use his iPhone SIM card in a japanese phone, bummer, does not work. It worked with his previous plan, but well, iPhone SIM is so locked down, nothing works. Plus, the iPhone has no G3 so there is no way it will work in Japan anyway.
Another example why lockdown is just plain stupid.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Why the hell do you need to 'activate' the thing at all? I've never 'activated' a phone before in my life. The things just work. And I always buy my phones without a SIM lock and without a subscription. What is this 'activation' business anyway?
-- Cheers!