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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.
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.
"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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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 think it's only a matter of time before Apple is forced to start monetizing their software directly.
because if the last 5 years have been any indication, Apple is clearly using a failing business model...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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.
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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.