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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."

8 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Awful summary, as usual by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "In what is surely going to be a slap in the face of Apple"? Are you serious?

    You can't seriously believe that Apple expected AT&T to stop selling every other variety of phone in existence once they picked up the iPhone. Controlling though he may be, I seriously doubt Steve Jobs is lying awake at night saying, "Those bastards! How dare they sell other phones!" Obviously AT&T was going to keep selling other kinds of phones, including Symbian phones, that's just common sense. But then, when there's a chance to bash Apple on Slashdot, common sense does seem to go out the window, doesn't it?

    And as for any moves on Apple's part being "too little, too late", the sales numbers hardly bear that out at this point. Last I checked, the iPhone was outsold all of RIM's devices put together last fiscal quarter. Obviously this is going to fluctuate as time goes on, I hardly think that demonstrates widespread pent-up demand for a FOSS mobile operating system. When you spend all your days on Slashdot, it's hard to notice, but believe it or not, not everyone gives a damn.

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  2. Good Luck with that by rsborg · · Score: 2, Interesting
    At least the G1 seems like a decent first start of a phone, but Symbian horror stories abound (the many different standards problem). Apple will continue to keep their cards close and won't license.

    As the telecoms are dragged kicking and screaming to the party, they will find out why Android and Mobile OSX will dominate the next-gen hardware.

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  3. Re:Are sex toys recession proof? by Jerry+Rivers · · Score: 1, Interesting

    LOL You're thinking of the Sybian.

    http://www.sybian.com/index.html?set=yes

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  4. Re:More like a shining gift to Apple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Android is going nowhere, at least in the short term. That's my educated opinion, as I was involved with it (hence the anonymous post). It's a side project for Google, and Google has been tightening up over the last few months. Most of the people working on android were contract workers (and have seen their contracts cancelled) or have been reassigned to other projects. Sure, it's open source and the community can support it, but it relies on binary blobs from handset providers and testing on green hardware. I hope it doesn't stagnate and die, but at this point, it looks like it might.

  5. Re:Slap in the face? by zaivala · · Score: 2, Interesting

    AT&T is already the sole service provider for the iPhone in the US... are they talking about discontinuing the iPhone, or merely adding some Symbian phones from Nokia to give more options?

  6. Re:Please... by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 3, Interesting
    PlatSec makes it possible to limit third party application capabilities,

    For Limit read block - for all intents and purposes, its not possible to get useful apps on Symbian any more - you can pay for cr*p, but that is not the same thing.

    People are saying "if its going to be locked, then I might as well buy Apple". If Symbian is going to sell phones it will only be because they dump this stupidity.

    Disclaimer: my last 4 phones have been Symbian, and I wont buy another till "Symbian SIgned" is history. If they have not killed it when my contract runs out, I will get an iPhone too. (like all my freinds, family and colleagues)

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  7. Re:Please... by EvilNTUser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So why did you buy your phones from a corporation that does that? You can very easily buy Symbian phones that aren't crippled. Your lousy consumer research has nothing to do with the security features of the OS.

    There are plenty of really useful applications for Symbian. For example, people have been walking around with Vorbis-capable music players in their pockets for several years while Slashdotters kept making bad jokes about how they just want to make calls.

    http://symbianoggplay.sourceforge.net/

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  8. Re:Slap in the face? by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Virtually all of their marketing is based on their position as the smug, elite minority

    I think that's more due to Apple dealing realistically with their role as a minority platform than actually wanting to be one. That is, while they'd undoubtedly be happy to be the dominant computing platform, they fact is that they aren't, so they're using the "elite minority" thing to make the best of their market position.

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