Slashdot Mirror
Rumor — AT&T Losing iPhone Exclusivity Next Week
MojoKid writes "An inside source over at HotHardware reports that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on 1/27, coincident with Apple's upcoming press event next week, though it's not yet clear what other carriers will be stepping in to pick up the iPhone. For anyone who has followed the saga, you may notice that you haven't seen AT&T fighting to extend their original exclusive agreement as of late. In fact, they have spent most of their time fighting Verizon's negative ad campaigns. This may not be all that surprising. Inside of AT&T, word is that the iPhone is causing more trouble than ever before. On some level, having the iPhone is hurting AT&T's image. Do you remember hearing about AT&T's 'horrible network' before the iPhone? The iPhone itself doesn't really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very gracefully, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail whenever 3G connections aren't optimal and the phone attempts to step down to EDGE. It seems that AT&T may finally be tired of taking the heat."
Indeed - and the same for any Nokia phone, or indeed any other phone :/ It's only Apple that gets coverage, with occasional reference to Google or maybe RIM, despite these being three of the smallest players in the market.
Slashdot didn't even cover phones before Apple decided to make one. Heaven forbid if Apple decided to make something like, I don't know, a Fridge. I can see it now - daily Slashdot stories about the almight iFrIdGe, awash with comments about how it's yet another amazing first because, although fridges did exist before them, people didn't really use them until Apple came along and it's better than other fridges because of *something mumble mumble I can't quite explain why*.
We'd then have people talking as if Apple were the number 1 fridge company, even if the reality was that the number of Apple fridges was about 1%. They'd only acknowledge competitors if Google joined in and released their own fridge too.