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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.
When will people stop expecting Apple to "open up" their products? It will never happen.
No.
Though you almost made me lol.
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?
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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.
"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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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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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.
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.
All your base are belong to Wii.
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.
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.
This is because ATT realizes just what the iPhone is ... An apple fanboi toy. It never caught on with the general public. Parts are very difficult up to impossible to get replaced without loosing your data. NO SPARE BATTERY possible. Come on every other Cell Phone on the planet has easily user replaceable or spare battery capability. A less than stellar relationship with application developers. Last but not least piss poor service from Apple. Now why do you wonder that ATT is looking for a replacement?
Oh yeah and I never owned one. I just listened to the bitching of the few I knew who did.
"Nowhere" seems like an odd statement for a phone OS that has ramped up to 1.5M units sold much faster than iPhone, and that in terms of architecture, license, security, and usability runs rings around iPhone and Symbian.
I think Android is going to be the darling of Chinese hardware manufacturers. It's a great OS to power all those hardware look-alike phones that come out of China, and people are going to discover quickly that an iPhone hardware clone running Android is the best phone you can buy--at half the price of an iPhone.