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AT&T Sidestepping Google, Eyes Symbian

Posted by Soulskill on from the hat-in-the-ring dept.

molotovjester writes "In what is surely going to be a slap in the face of Apple, AT&T is eyeballing the Symbian platform as a smart-phone OS for an army of new handsets it expects will make up the majority of the market by 2014. Is this move too little, too late compared to Google's Android? Will Apple open up its iPhone platform, or will dreams of electric sheep be dreamed up by the majority of cell phone users? I wrote an analysis of the industry players as of mid-November, but it will be interesting to see what AT&T does and how it changes the mobile ecosystem."

7 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Please... by imamac · · Score: 4, Informative

    When will people stop expecting Apple to "open up" their products? It will never happen.

    1. Re:Please... by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why? What business model would you suggest they follow?

      It's not like they can pull a Microsoft and require a license fee for every single phone shipped by AT&T and all their other iPhone vendors (that is what got Microsoft their millions from the PC manufacturers).

      Can you name another vendor that sells hardware that monetizes their software, and manages to grow handsomely?

      Sun isn't it, they give away their OS that isn't tied to their hardware AND they happen to be going down.

      IBM isn't it, they sold their hardware PC divisions, and their computing divisions they do have they aren't monetizing their OS (AIX).

      HP isn't it either; HPUX isn't "monetized".

      Even Microsoft doesn't do it (for their Zune, their XBox, and XBox 360).

      The closest I can think of is Android, but that's still "free", with the monetization coming in from advertising dollars as more handsets connect to the net.

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    2. Re:Please... by donatzsky · · Score: 4, Informative

      And Symbian is not?
      http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081203-nokias-oss-strategy-gets-boost-as-symbian-deal-completed.html

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    3. Re:Please... by LucidBeast · · Score: 2, Informative

      Since 9.2 (or maybe 9.1) Symbian has has platform security. PlatSec makes it possible to limit third party application capabilities, basically giving the issuer of the phone full control what kind and whose applications can run on it.

    4. Re:Please... by davester666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      > LOL, don't be a 'tard. Not everything is a conspiracy. Then how do you explain it away? Given explicit support on the iPhone (over both 2G and 3G networks) for: -streaming video from YouTube -downloading podcasts (which are free audio files that can easily be larger than music files) -ability to navigate the iTunes Music Store and purchase music (but not download it) -ability to purchase applications for the iPhone, which can be several times the size of a typical music file How do you explain this arbitrary limitation of not being able to download purchased music? The only reasonable explanation for it (to me anyways) is that the carriers (and probably the RIAA cartel) want to protect the inflated prices for music and ringtones in their existing music portals. The other reason I can think of, namely that the carriers think that allowing the purchase of music would flood their networks with excessive traffic, doesn't really make sense to me. If you ignore the initial network crush, when the iPhone comes out with this ability and people show off this feature to their friends, I don't think it'll have a large effect on traffic because it'll wind up being self-limiting because: -the music costs money. people aren't going to drop $20 every day on a couple of albums. They'll search during their spare time for a new song, or buy a song they hear on the radio. -it doesn't really matter how long it takes to download the song, as it's not streaming. It's just a file download, like a podcast. It's not a big deal if it takes 10 minutes instead of 5. And if the GPhone is a sign of new 'openness', why is there a project to crack the firmware so you can install your own on it? In the spectrum of completely open to completely locked down, the carriers are inching along as slowly as possible towards providing more 'open' handsets. As another example, take tethering your laptop to your phone. You've paid for a so-called "unlimited" data plan, and now the more advanced browsers on your phone will download the same page data that the browser on your computer will, so the data load is the same. But the carriers want you to pay again for the privilege of transporting the data over your own network (namely between your phone and your computer)...

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  2. Re:A win for open-source? Only if AT&T opens i by i.of.the.storm · · Score: 3, Informative

    S40 then? I haven't seen many Symbian devices since they aren't that common here in the US, but in Bangladesh my relatives had these basic phones that ran S40 and it was actually pretty advanced for regular feature phones.

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  3. Re:Wrong summary by ConanG · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not sure what you mean when you say "opens their network." Isn't their network open already? You can use any unlocked device with an AT&T sim and it'll work. I've got an N78 on an AT&T "Pick your Plan" prepaid account right now.