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AT&T Sidestepping Google, Eyes Symbian
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."
A slap in the face? Come on. Apple's not going to care. There will always be other smartphones out there. Apple wouldn't have any desire for their OS to run on other phones. Their plan is to try to get THEIR product to dominate the market.
No.
Though you almost made me lol.
Apple will "open up" its products, in the sense it will make them "more open" it will however, not "make them open". Both sides are right, just for some values of "open". As for AT&T, my gut feeling is that Android's too open for them.
I honestly don't expect Apple to care too much.
Who stands more to lose: Apple because AT&T is running another phone in addition to the iPhone, or AT&T because Apple decides to let other carriers have the iPhone.
Which gives Apple the bigger market share?
http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
Sometimes it seems AT&T does not know wtf it wants - with its exclusive deal with Apple and its eyes on a platform it wants to if I read the article correctly "open source" it seems to wandering blindly around. Apple as long as its selling units is not really going to care. I nearly turned down a free completely paid for Blackberry with the service paid for automatically by the company for the chance to own an iPhone even if it meant expensing by bill month to month.
ACK
I RTFA, and it seems to me AT&T is looking for a common operating system for their "base" or cheaper phones. This would serve as a replacement for all of the Java crap that's out there now. They also further state that they see Apple as a third party provider using their network services. This has the potential to be the best situation of all. If AT&T opens their network to third party devices, not just Apple/RIM/Windows Mobile, we could see all manner of innovation in the near future.
This is in no way a slap in the face of Apple. If anything it's a validation of Apple's current iPhone model. (That is, if you ignore subsidies and rebates)
I don't think this is a slap in the face of Apple. AT&T needs to hedge its bets - the iPhone exclusivity deal isn't forever, it's until 2010. And when the contract expires, if Apple goes multi carrier or drops AT&T entirely, then AT&T better have the backup plan well in the works. And given that it's almost 2009, it's probably a good idea to get the backup plan done now.
Well, as often the /. tagline is rather full of hyperpole. FTA:
'Seth Bloom, an AT&T spokesperson, confirmed to Ars Technica that the company "has no plans to standardize on one platform for our smart devices. But we have said that we see potential benefit in standardizing our low-end devices on a single mobile OS, though we have not finalized our plans to do so." '
So, you'll get probably get a crippled/slow device with the ability to expensively download crap 'approved' by AT&T. I'll pass.
I'm not an expert, but here's how I'm pretty sure it works. OS X itself is not open, as OS X is just the GUI over Darwin, which is open. Darwin is based on BSD, so it has to be open, but OS X as a GUI was developed entirely at Apple. So, the iPhone uses OS X, but that isn't open. I'm not sure if it's running over something based on Darwin, but they may have just modified the version of OS X on the iPhone to run independently, so nothing is open. Again, I'm no expert and I don't even own an iPhone, but that's how I think it works based on what I've read about it.
We have a winner. AT&T stands to lose a hell of a lot more if Apple brings the iPhone to other carriers than Apple has to lose if AT&T offers other smart phones that run other OS's. AT&T's move is smart. Not everybody wants an iPhone so you might as well offer other smart phones. It would be suicide not to. I doubt Apple cares. Last time I checked the iPhone is doing pretty damn well and Apple isn't the kind of company that wants every person on the planet to buy it's stuff. They realize that there is a certain group of people willing to pay more for their products and they've done pretty well for themselves catering to that market.
I'm not a copyright expert by any means, far from it, but isn't the BSD license really permissive? There's BSD code in Windows too, the old networking stack IIRC (pre-Vista I think). And in any case, OS X being based on BSD doesn't make it open. I think the GP was correct, the kernel is open source but that doesn't mean the GUI stuff has to be.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Like all other cell phones, any phone AT&T "makes" is as open as they (and the manufacturer) decide to make it. Even if part of the source for the phones operating system is available, it is unlikely that AT&T will make it any easier for end-users to install custom firmware than the G1 does or the iPhone does.
Same with Applications. It will be completely up to AT&T to control what API's will be available on the phone (just like it is now, arguably, the sole exception being the iPhone), and what applications will be permitted on the phone and where you will be able to acquire them from.
People seem to be assuming that because the Symbian OS is open source, that the phone itself is going to be wide open for whatever you want to do. This is highly unlikely.
Even the magical GoogleOSPhone has arbitrary limitations, such as you can't download music to the phone over the 3G network, not because of bandwidth concerns, but solely to protect the carriers revenue stream for their existing overpriced music store that they force their customers with other handsets to use.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I doubt Apple cares. Last time I checked the iPhone is doing pretty damn well and Apple isn't the kind of company that wants every person on the planet to buy it's stuff.
Because if everyone's special, then no one is.