Slashdot Mirror
Why Verizon Doesn't Want You To Buy an iPhone
Hugh Pickens writes "Sascha Segan writes that although Verizon adamantly denies steering customers away from Apple's iPhones in favor of 4G LTE-enabled Android devices, he is convinced that Verizon has a strong reason to push buyers away from the iPhone. 'Here's the problem,' writes Segan. 'Verizon has spent millions of dollars rolling out its massive LTE network' but the carrier can't easily add capacity on its old 3G network. Since the iPhone isn't a 4G phone, sales of Verizon iPhones just crowd up their already busy 3G network while their 4G network has plenty of space. 'The iPhone is a great device. But it's making a crowded network more crowded. Until the LTE iPhone comes along, to rebalance its network, Verizon may quietly push Android phones.'"
Add an unlimited plan that applies to 4g only. That'll give Android users some bragging rights for at least a few months. Then, when the iPhone gets 4g, Verizon won't need the plan and can drop it, and that'll allow Android users to blame the iPhone for ruining the party.
The CB App. What's your 20?
All I hear is, "we're making money hand over fist, but it's not all perfect...". Meanwhile they paid a negative federal tax in 2011 [1] and are lobbying for even lower taxes and local subsidies.
The iPhone is their best selling device. The next iPhone will have LTE support (like the iPad today). Verizon just sounds like a whiny child who didn't get *everything* they wanted for Christmas.
In short, fuck them and their entitlement complaints.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Here's the problem: the Lumia 900 is an GSM/LTE cellphone, not a CDMA/LTE cellphone. As such, the Lumia 900 can be engineered for GSM networks (which is essentially most of the world's cellphone networks!) that have added LTE functionality, for example Australia's own cellphone network with GSM and LTE.
I have a 4G/LTE capable Android phone (Samsung Conquer on Sprint). 4G is fast, where it's available, but I leave it off except when I really need more speed than 3G can provide and I don't have Wi-Fi available, because it kills battery life. About 90% of the time, I have Wi-Fi, and most of the remainder, 3G is fast enough. So, if and when 4G/LTE chipsets can provide the speed without a major hit to battery life, that will be a viable option. Not so coincidentally, that's exactly the reason Apple gave for not supporting LTE yet.
So, from technical perspective, it may appear to make sense to push customers to 4G/LTE phones, many will do as I have and turn off 4G eliminating the technical advantages. Many of the others will complain about the battery life, it's not necessarily good customer relations.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
It seems to be #7 on Amazon best sellers.
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Cell-Phones-Accessories-Service-Plans/zgbs/wireless/2407747011/ref=zg_bs_nav_cps_1_cps
#7 isn't bad for a phone which nobody wants.
1. The Lumia 900 is not a CDMA LTE device. Which in the US kind of shoots it in the foot. Verizon which is number one in the US is CDMA as is Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T are GSM CDMA carriers.
2. There are three players right now. Don't forget RIM. While not doing great these days they have more marketshare than WP7.
3. The Lumia 900 may not run WP8 which is really going to suck for those people that bought the "first real Windows Phone 7 phone".
4. Windows 8 is the real OS that will make Microsoft competitive in the market.... Except that is what they said about WM6 WM6.5 and WP7 so I would not hold my breath.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This article misses a major clue -- people who are buying iPhones are not doing so because their carrier steers them towards them. As many people know about the iPhone as know about Verizon. There are people who wouldn't switch to Verizon because they didn't offer the iPhone. Name another phone that people do that for. The truth is, if Apple pushes people away from Verizon it will make a bigger difference for Verizon than it will for Apple if Verizon steers people away from iPhone.
Currently hooked on AMP
Verizon may quietly push Android phones.
Or they may not.
I'll just quote from the source articles and let you make up your own minds.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/03/technology/verizon-iphone-sales/
Anecdotal evidence is stacking up on chat forums and other outlets...
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/03/technology/verizon-iphone-sales/
A pretty hot story is going around, stoked by CNNMoney...
[give some facts]
Maybe those are minor factors, but they aren't the primary reason.
[reach any conclusion you want]
MAYBE it's true, maybe it's not, but I fucking hate "new media".
This past spring I was shopping for a new small business account. My contract for my iPhone had expired with AT&T so I did my shopping. One of the major things I wanted was tethering so I could connect my laptop or iPad (wifi only) when I needed to on the road.
Sprint sold me on a mobile plan for the iPhone which is about $70 a month plus a 3g/4g Mobile hotspot instead of tethering. Even with both lines it's still about $40 a month cheaper than either AT&T or Verizon with 6GB of transfer vs 4GB for "tethering". Not to mention the deposit for a new small business account was a lot less with Sprint vs. AT&T or Verizon.
So I have 4G speeds with the iPhone via the hotspot if I want them. Or if I'm getting close to my data limit, I can do more of my business with the iPhone's unlimited data at 3G speeds.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I suspect that carriers have a somewhat mixed view of encouraging Microsoft to not fail.
In their competition with other wireless carriers, the carriers do want spiffy devices that will sell contracts and data plans. However, in the fight between telcos and tech companies over how the money gets divided, having strong handset and internet-based-services entities is Very Much Not what they want.
The AT&T/iPhone case is the most blatant: AT&T had an exclusive on what people wanted, and scored substantial sales despite constant whining about how their network sucked. However, Apple demanded a nontrivial slice, and their expansion into 'iMessage' and 'Facetime' and whatnot, never mind the annihilation of carrier download stores in favor of their own, shows a distinct disinterest in protecting the carrier's future gouging for SMS and other such services.
Given Microsoft's strong control of their platform and(while currently rather larval) strong potential for future integration with MS-controlled services to the exclusion of carrier ones, it isn't obvious that a carrier would want to encourage them.
Android, by contrast, is fairly closely controlled by Google if you want the full, blessed, all-google-goodness, flagship; but Google's very weak control over the periphery of the Android ecosystem means that it is trivial to get just about any company that makes cellphones to puke up an Android handset for you, complete with carrier branding and crapware, at cutthroat commodity prices. There is also some flexibility when it comes to hardware design. Consider something like the 'Motorola Admiral'(known to its somewhat reluctant users as the 'droidberry'). Not a wildly compelling phone; but the fact that you can get hardware that looks like that churned out probably helps the next time you and RIM go to the table about Blackberry service pricing...
And the US your GSM options are T-Mobile and AT&T. Verizon and Sprint are both CDMA.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
#7 isn't bad for a phone which nobody wants.
Yes it is. It's a disaster. Because it's the only Windows phone anybody is pushing. You're basically comparing the entire Windows phone market to specific models of Android phones -- and even by doing that, you end up as #7 rather than #1.
I recently decided to try out Android before someone takes away my geek card :)
It's fun from a dicking around perspective, but I can definitely see how the average user would see it as inferior. It has taken me untold hours of screwing around to figure out how to get the same battery life as my old iPhones had, despite having a larger battery. In the end, I settled on an application that fixes the screen dimming on my phone and another that limits how often apps can use the data connection when the phone's screen is off, and another that sets the data networks on and off depending on where I physically am located.
Now on the one hand, I'm massively impressed because none of that would be possible on a stock iPhone. On the other hand, I never felt the need to look for those kinds of applications on an iPhone. Oh, and the jailbreaking thing is easier than the rooting thing - or at least it was for me. And yes you need root for the really fun stuff (and to keep the geek card). Backup needs some serious help on Android. I have done the standard thing and replaced the rescue utility with the fancy CWM-based recovery utility, but really that kind of thing should be included.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
On an iphone, the 30% cut goes directly to Apple. On an android, the 30% cut goes to the carrier. This bribe from Google was obviously a component in the widespread adoption of android by the carriers - although I've no idea how large of a component. I wonder how much that affects marketing issues like this. I don't see why they wouldn't be throwing a few more advertising dollars in favor of the phone that nets them a higher income.
Not to jump on SpryGuy or anything but I have noticed a bunch of people posting about Windows Phone on here.
It's really not a very interesting OS, what Nokia had previous to the Microsoft "buyout" was: http://swipe.nokia.com/
I do agree we need more competition doing well in the marketplace than Android and iStuff, but can we not get stuck with another propriatary OS that doesn't even allow GPL licensed software to compete?
A possibly interesting tangent... if you click on the top-most link to the left of that page there - the one labeled "Cell Phones & Accessories" - the top twenty products are all iPhone accessories, not Android accessories. And on the next page, 21-40, all but three of the items are iPhone accessories.
People may be buying their Android phones on Amazon, but they're sure not buying much in the way of cases, extended-power batteries, and such for them.
#DeleteChrome
That's one of the reasons carriers are willing to pay a higher subsidy for iPhone users. Apple customers buy more stuff across the board. They buy more services, they buy more accessories, they add more people to their accounts.... Apple focuses like a laser not on market share, but market share among profitable customers. That's why they generally pull 80+% out of markets they often have 10% or less share of.
LTE capability is just part of it. The direction is to get off of dedicated telephony transport systems and move to an all IP solution. LTE to the carriers is not just bandwidth and a different spectrum but also the promise of controlling future costs by getting away from systems that have to be replaced every couple years with a new technology.
Phone design becomes simpler and the telephony application is disentangled from the physical system (towers, radios, cell management, etc etc). Most people are not aware of just how much infrastructure the cell providers have gone through in the past decade.
Not feeling sorry for them as there is always a profit in there but it does help explain why your carrier may not come out with your much anticipated latest device as quickly as you like. Often there are hidden system changes that have to be invested in and implemented: all of which requires investment, resources and time.
There is a payoff from convergence for the user as well. You may not know it but that old CDMA or whatever phone may have better coverage than your GSM iphone simply because your carrier chose not to upgrade/add/replace hardware on all towers. Lots of fragmentation in the cellular coverage because of the many different "standards" that have come and gone.
IP convergence has been a religious mantra in the wireline world for a long time now but it also is hugely important in the wireless world.
Your phone becomes a pure data device where the telephone is essentially just a canned VOIP application.
Well of course the numbers are larger you silly child there are more accessories for iPhone than for Android. Its a numbers game at that point and not a telling of the markets movement.
I'll have to remember this one.... Making more varieties of something guarantees you will take all the top sales spots. Brilliant!
If the #1 selling item does 1 million units and the #2 does 100,000 - then making 8 different varieties of the #1 item and splitting the market 8 different ways will move the #2 guy down to #9 without any change in actual units being sold.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Do you really need to make a phone call anywhere at any time?
Yes, and that's why I carry a $7 per month Virgin Mobile dumbphone in case I need to be picked up somewhere.
Do you really need to check that email immediately?
No, and that's why I carry a netbook that can download e-mail over Wi-Fi before I leave so that I can read and reply while I'm riding the bus.
Doesn't LTE actually converge these 2 standards - CDMA and GSM into one?
Nope. LTE is part of the GSM family - CDMA has functionally dead-ended (at least in the US) with EVDO Rev B. It seems like it's a convergence because you will eventually finally have all four major US carriers using a single 4G technology. But having LTE on a phone doesn't make 2G/3G CDMA and GSM technologies any more compatible.
This is especially important because in the US right now, none of the major carriers have implemented Voice over LTE (VoLTE), so when you use a data connection it's routed over the LTE network... but your voice calls use the 3G circuit-switched network instead. No compatible 3G = no phone calls. Also remember that the US carriers are all deploying LTE on different bands so an LTE phone designed for one won't necessarily work with the other.
"95% of all Slashdot
The attempts by people to badmouth CDMA never cease to amaze me. The original GSM was based on the horribly inefficient TDMA. Basically, the phones took turns talking to the tower, even if they had nothing to say. You got the same limited bandwidth whether you were the only phone connected to the tower, or if the tower were at capacity. If there were more phones than timeslices, you couldn't connect, period.
CDMA allows all phones to transmit simultaneously, they just use orthogonal codes which allow the tower to decipher which signal came from which phone. It's computationally more expensive, but it allows a single phone to use all the bandwidth if there are no other phones, while distributing the bandwidth equally if there are multiple phones. If there are more phones transmitting than bandwidth, you start getting dropouts (the volatility of SNR means there's no hard limit at which this happens, as with TDMA).
When carriers started adding data services, GSM was borked due to TDMA's inefficiency. That's why CDMA carriers rolled out 2G and 3G service about a year sooner than GSM carriers. GSM was forced to graft on a separate non-TDMA radio just to handle data traffic. (This is also why you can talk and use data simultaneously on GSM - the phones have two radios, one for voice, one for data. It's not a feature; it's a side-benefit to a fix which CDMA never needed. Most CDMA phones just have one radio which handles both voice and data.) The later GSM 3g data protocols used wideband CDMA. That's right, CDMA won - it was the better technology for data. GSM just incorporated it into their standard so it was still called GSM. If LTE is CDMA functionally dead-ending, then GSM dead-ended way back when cellular data services were first added.
What's happening with LTE is that most implementations are opting for OFDMA. OFDMA can squeeze in more bandwidth than CDMA, but requires even more processing power. Until recently, microprocessors weren't powerful enough to decode it on a cell phone without severely impacting battery life (this is the reason early LTE implementations have a reputation for being power hogs). Because it's OFDMA, it requires a different radio. That's old hat for GSM phones - just add a third radio for LTE. But it's something new for CDMA phones - CDMA radio for voice and 3g data, add a second radio for LTE. (And yes, this means you can talk and use LTE data simultaneously on a CDMA phone.)
GSM and CDMA have nothing to do with LTE technologically; it is just the standard they've decided to use for 4g data. In both cases, a completely new radio has to be added to the phone to handle LTE traffic. GSM using LTE is not a concession to CDMA, and CDMA using LTE is not a concession to GSM. Theoretically, if you expanded the operating frequencies, an LTE tower should be able to service 4g data for both GSM and CDMA phones (the whole point of LTE was to standardize a lot of the underlying technologies for compatibility). But until GSM ditches TDMA for voice and/or CDMA ditches CDMA for voice, there will be no convergence.
There was no intent to "badmouth" CDMA. As you correctly point out, Wideband CDMA ultimately won the day as a technology. Your recap of the technologies' comparative strengths is very well written. But when I spoke of CDMA as having dead-ended, I was referring to the vendor technology path, not the underlying technology itself. Most people are only familiar with "CDMA" and "GSM" as the two competing cellular technology families in the US, without necessarily understanding what that means (other than "one has a SIM card and the other doesn't.") Telling them that their 2G "GSM" is really EDGE - and their 3G HSPA acts more like CDMA than GSM - will for most audiences just confuse the issue. So I stand by my assertion that "CDMA" the technology path is dead, and "GSM" is moving forward, but there's no value judgement on the technologies underlying that implicit in my comments.
"95% of all Slashdot
Funny that when I clicked the link it had already fallen to #9, damn that was fast!
The problem with a "Windows phone' is that the word "Windows" has a VERY specific meaning in the eyes of the vast majority and that is the ability to run Windows programs, aka x86 Windows software. Since neither is the phone capable of running X86 windows software nor does the public want to run X86 Windows programs on a teeny cell phone screen naturally its gonna bomb.
The smartest thing MSFT can do is when Win 8 bombs (which from the amount of sheer hatred its getting is probably a certainty on non touch screen devices which of course is MSFT's and the OEM's biggest sellers) is to spin off the mobile division so that MSFT and Windows names simply aren't attached to it as the name has too much history and baggage to deal with. if it were me I'd call it "Metro OS" and work to make it easy to sync up with the X360 and PC but other than that and porting some of the big names like MS Office I would let it sink or swim on its own and like in the old days of having the consumer and business desktops be two totally different things so too would mobile and X86 be two separate paths.
Lets face it the name Windows bring nothing to the table but baggage when it comes to smartphones and ARM based tablets. I saw this first hand last Xmas when a local retailer tried to sell "Windows tablets" based on WinCE and got to take a bath on the returns. When people see something that looks like windows dammit they are gonna expect it to run like Windows and the average user doesn't know ARM from a P4, all they go by is appearance and how big the numbers next to the device are. you see this in X86 with how much AMD is able to sell out Bulldozer chips despite really shitty reviews because people see 8 cores and automatically assume that is better than 4 Intel ones since 8 is better than 4.
In the end as long as it has the name Windows on it its just not gonna compete with Android or iPhone. Its like when I was helping my dad pick out a cell phone (he chose an HTC Android phone) and when we came to the Windows phones the first words out of his mouth were "Why would I want Quickbooks on my phone?" because that is what Windows is for my dad, MSN Messenger and QB. It frankly wouldn't matter if MSFT put out the best phone on the planet (although if the rumors are true and WinPhone 7 won't get Win 8 I'd say its doing pretty poorly in that regard) because there is just too much baggage with the brand.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The claim is only false if you're being pedantic. Obviously the device has a non-zero number of sales -- I'm sure Microsoft has cajoled their employees into buying it, at least. The problem is that Nokia has made itself a one trick pony. Motorola has 10 phones in the top 50. HTC has 13. Samsung has 14. Nokia has 2, which are really just two different colors of the same device. If Nokia had an entire line of phones taking a dozen spots in the top 50 like their competitors then having their flagship at #7 or #4 would be no big deal, but they don't. They bet the farm on this thing. The only way that works is if (like the iPhone) you can make so many sales of your flagship that it can overcome the lack of alternative products, and they've failed.