“Some in Silicon Valley remain stumped by Apple Inc.’s ongoing exclusive distribution deal with the increasingly maligned carrier, AT&T Inc. Since Apple announced its new iPhone 3G S Monday, the griping among fans has been non-stop,” Therese Poletti reports for MarketWatch. “Some are wondering again, as they did at the launch of the first iPhone, is AT&T an albatross for Apple?”
“AT&T said in its press release on Monday that the new iPhone ‘will be compatible with High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 technology, which offers theoretical peak download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps (megabits per second), though actual speeds will vary as these capabilities become available. AT&T plans to begin deploying HSPA 7.2 later this year, with completion expected in 2011,'” Poletti reports.
“So if you buy the new iPhone 3G S for $199 now, it seems you are paying more for useful features in the phone, not the network. A compass, better camera with video capabilities and voice dialing or calling up songs from your iTunes playlist are among the big features,” Poletti reports. “The version with a 32-gigabyte flash drive costs $299, and current iPhone owners who are not eligible for upgrades will pay even more for their phones.”
MacDailyNews Note: Because they have not yet finished paying for their current iPhones.
Poletti continues, “There were two other points of contention after Monday’s announcements. AT&T was absent from the list of carriers worldwide that will immediately support a feature called tethering. This will let the new iPhone 3G S act as a sort of wireless modem for laptops. Apple showed a list of the initial 22 carriers around the world that will support tethering next week at launch; AT&T was conspicuously absent. [Apple’s new iPhone OS 3.0 offers] “MMS, for sending multimedia messages like photos and video, but AT&T won’t offer that service until late this summer. Another mystery.”
“But software developers tell another side of the story. When a customer buys an application in Apple’s iPhone App Store, whether it’s a game or car navigation software, it’s simple to buy through an Apple iTunes account,” Poletti reports. “Apple’s App Store is a direct contrast to shopping for applications on other cell phones, which feature games or applications that give carriers a big share of the revenue. The billing of these sales is also more convoluted, as each transaction is processed by the carriers, who take a cut of the sale. Consumers are billed separately by the developers.”
Apple’s rivals “are eager to create the kind of ecosystem with the thousands of software developers that Apple has fostered [with AT&T],” Poletti reports. “As competition gets more fierce, time will tell if Apple’s exclusive AT&T deal is indeed an Achilles heel.”
Full article here.
