France does not shine better than the US by imposing unlocked phones. The 3 french mobile carriers imposed price fixing to french consumers for a few years and under public pressure they recently were condemned to pay more than 600M euros in penalties by... the french judicial system which prove to protect consumers better and better these days.
Anyone who thinks that french consumers are truly protected because phones must be unlocked before being sold has a very limited picture of a wider reality: Apple can sell unlocked iphones directly without the carriers in the middle. And when they do it may not be an iPhone but an souped up iTouch anyway.
Skype runs fine on OSX so it's not a big deal to run it on the iTouch or on the iPhone over wifi, if Apple partners with Skype as they did with YouTube. In fact they have the best video codec in existance when it comes to performance for video conferences and video in general.
Give me iChat with the equivalent of a "Skype In" phone number that will suddenly make it ring like a regular phone and I will see less and less motivation to buy the same device with only voice and slow as snail GPRS network as the only added value beside the camera.
And since half France is concentrated in or around Paris anyway all it takes is a good wifi provider to take enough of the market over and for the french carrier to feel the new pain of a true global paradigm shift on which they will have near zero control.
Apple is not only disruptive with the iPhone but with well though out and unstoppable strategy that sounds much more popular in people's hand than any phone sold by a carrier in Europe in the last 5 years.
Anyone thinking that Steve has not planned for the french to pull out of their comittment at the last minute is a bit naive. That's what he may have expected and it maybe the first market where he proves that the carriers have lost the lead forever when it comes to technology and partnerships with real Sillicon Valley companies. Technology that they have never created themselves but barely operated under illegal pricing conditions.
Apple is doing to the market what no government would ever have the power to do, speak directly to 100 millions ipod users heart, in record time. No french company has ever achived such results and certainly not Alcatel and Sagem.
So after all the french have one thing for them, they don't get screwed easilly once they find out they already were:->
And when they do they are always happy to see the US bouncing the rapists after they lost the energy to do it themselves.
Now the only problem is the US is behind their back and I don't see any backup coming soon from Nokia, LG or Sony.
Maybe one day the french will impose the unlocked canadian phone, such as a blackberry that would work with any push email service.
Ok, i stop, enough for tonight:->
Slashdot Mirror
France does not shine better than the US by imposing unlocked phones. The 3 french mobile carriers imposed price fixing to french consumers for a few years and under public pressure they recently were condemned to pay more than 600M euros in penalties by... the french judicial system which prove to protect consumers better and better these days. Anyone who thinks that french consumers are truly protected because phones must be unlocked before being sold has a very limited picture of a wider reality: Apple can sell unlocked iphones directly without the carriers in the middle. And when they do it may not be an iPhone but an souped up iTouch anyway. Skype runs fine on OSX so it's not a big deal to run it on the iTouch or on the iPhone over wifi, if Apple partners with Skype as they did with YouTube. In fact they have the best video codec in existance when it comes to performance for video conferences and video in general. Give me iChat with the equivalent of a "Skype In" phone number that will suddenly make it ring like a regular phone and I will see less and less motivation to buy the same device with only voice and slow as snail GPRS network as the only added value beside the camera. And since half France is concentrated in or around Paris anyway all it takes is a good wifi provider to take enough of the market over and for the french carrier to feel the new pain of a true global paradigm shift on which they will have near zero control. Apple is not only disruptive with the iPhone but with well though out and unstoppable strategy that sounds much more popular in people's hand than any phone sold by a carrier in Europe in the last 5 years. Anyone thinking that Steve has not planned for the french to pull out of their comittment at the last minute is a bit naive. That's what he may have expected and it maybe the first market where he proves that the carriers have lost the lead forever when it comes to technology and partnerships with real Sillicon Valley companies. Technology that they have never created themselves but barely operated under illegal pricing conditions. Apple is doing to the market what no government would ever have the power to do, speak directly to 100 millions ipod users heart, in record time. No french company has ever achived such results and certainly not Alcatel and Sagem. So after all the french have one thing for them, they don't get screwed easilly once they find out they already were :->
And when they do they are always happy to see the US bouncing the rapists after they lost the energy to do it themselves.
Now the only problem is the US is behind their back and I don't see any backup coming soon from Nokia, LG or Sony.
Maybe one day the french will impose the unlocked canadian phone, such as a blackberry that would work with any push email service.
Ok, i stop, enough for tonight :->