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“Nowhere is this more important than in the US, where the iPhone is available on just a single carrier—one that’s decidedly not the market leader,” Siracusa writes. “The only way for Apple to eliminate the distribution and marketing advantage currently enjoyed by Android is to make sure that everywhere an Android phone is for sale, there’s an iPhone sitting right next to it that will work on the same network.”
Siracusa writes, “Only then will Apple get a fair shot at selling based on the things it can actually control: the hardware and software of the phone itself. At that point, it can—and should—diversify its iPhone product line just like it did with the iPod in the last decade.”
Full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: We obviously agree with Siracusa:
“Google Android offers the same messy, inconsistent Windows PC ‘experience,’ but without any cost savings, real or perceived. Windows only thrived back in the mid-90s because PCs (and Macs) were so expensive; the upfront cost advantage roped in a lot of people, who were, frankly, ignorant followers who did what their similarly-ignorant co-workers and friends told them to do. Microsoft still coasts along on that momentum today.
The fact is: Apple’s iPhone [3GS] costs just $99 and the [iPhone 4] goes for only $199 in the U.S. with a 2-year plan. I’d call any Android device the ‘Poor Man’s iPhone,’ but you have to spend just as much, if not more, to partake in an increasingly fragmented and inferior platform. There’s no real reason to choose Android, people settle for Android. ‘I’d have bought an iPhone if Verizon offered them.'” Just look what’s happening in any country where iPhone is offered on multiple carriers. It’s a bloodbath.
Apple offers consistency to developers of both software and hardware. Just look at the vibrant third-party accessories market for iPhone vs. the Zune-like handful of oddball items for Android. If you make a case or a vehicle mount, does it pay to make 14 different Android devices that number under 1 million each, or to make one or two for what’s [over] 100 million iPhone/iPod touch devices? As Apple’s iPhone expands onto more and more carriers, Android’s only real selling point (‘I’m stuck on Verizon or some other carrier that doesn’t offer the iPhone’) evaporates.” – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, “iPhone isn’t the Mac, so stop comparing them,” December 22, 2009
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Adam S.” for the heads up.]
Yea, all true MDN, but, as you know, and as the Windows/PC experience tells us, once a customer gets used to a platform, it’s hard to get them to switch, even if the platform is incredibly inferior (e.g., Vista), which Android is not. Inertia is one the most powerful forces in the universe. Apple needs to get its act together or there will be multiple tens of millions of Android users in the US (30 M by your own calculation) who will be lost to them as customers. I’ve heard people say Apple doesn’t care about selling the most smart phones they just want to sell the best phone, but that’s nuts. They are in a position to be both the best and the most widely used and they would be fools to give up that position.
Oh ye of little faith.
Yes, one more carrier would open up more sales and Apple is doing quite well with one carrier. Even one that has been jumped on more times than a diving board on a hot, still, humid southern day.
When the iPhone makes it to other carriers, Apple, will need more compacity than they have now. So Apple will move at the speed of Apple.
Apple’s new slogan should be “iPhone everywhere”
I am a Mac guy for 16 years. Have 3 desktops in my house, along with 5 iPods, 3 of which are iPod Touch plus I have a Wi-fi iPad.
I have considered getting an Android because I have had ATT service and WILL NOT subject myself to it again. I know it is no iPhone, but I have to have a PHONE that works as well as mobile web and apps. In the end it is still a PHONE first.
Hope verizon never gets the iPhone. Hope tmobile and sprint get the iPhone.
I will say this, it isimpossible that androids areselling at a 200K clip. Now if they ascribe a phone running android but without internet capability, maybe. But 200k smartphones with at least a 3 inch screen, is a tall tale.
We’ll get other carriers when Steve says we will get other carriers. Until then, be happy with what Steve will let you have.
You know, behave like the good little lemmings we have always been.
Yeah but not if Verizon try to use this as leverage to pit Apple vs. Google, either offer to pay less subsidies to Apple, or ask Google for a big payment to withhold iPhone from upstaging Androids, which I bet Schmidt is more than willing to do.
Best if feds declare sole service provider illegal, like not being able to choose your cable/satellite provider, unless there’s physical impossibilities.
So Apple can’t make iPhones fast enough and somehow we are getting worried about an iPhone wannabe.
I’m sure Corollas outsell BMW’s all the time but this dies not make Carollas better and BMW is still making money and retaining customers.
If it’s true that Verizon or someone else is getting the iPhone in January or thereabouts, they should make it known as soon as possible. That would help freeze the Android Market and build HUGE demand for the iPhone… all over again.
Respectfully disagree. Right now Apple is selling as many phones as they can make. An additional carrier would NOT increase sales because it COULD NOT increase sales. Further, it would actually slow sales as plants had to be diverted from current production to creating a new product.
As appealing as the concept sounds, switching to Verizon at this time would actually be counter-productive. Apple knows this even is Apple fans and pundits do not.
Don’t Panic!
Apple’s not sleeping.
If the other American carriers will let all of their customers upgrade to the iPhone when they get it, bloodbath. 2/3 of Android phone users will switch. Apple has to make the immediate upgrade thing part of each deal.
Funny how so many people think that Steve is just arrogantly keeping the iPhone locked to AT&T. Wake up you idiots. Apple is tied to AT&T for the term of their contract. Apple wants the iPhone in as many people’s hands as possible – the iPhone will be on multiple carriers in this country soon enough. Wether that means Verizon no one knows, but i’m sure come 2011 or 2012 we’ll find out.
Please not the evil coalition og Google-Verizon. Sprint & T-Mobile yes. But any carrier flirting with ending Net Nutrality should be boycotted.
Siracusa and MDN need to get your heads out of your asses. Apple is already doing this , dumbasses
I’m always waiting for Steve Jobs to tell me what to do. He’s my hero. And I love AT&T too.
I wonder what the Android to iPhone ratio is on the ATT network. If we knew that, then we could predict what the ratio will be in the US when iPhone is nonexclusive.
yeah – while on the outside looking in it makes perfect sense to spread the iPhone across many carriers – we do not know exactly the details – especially in the US. Apple may want to become second or third player in volume (while maintaining healthy profit margin). maybe to get the feds off their backs…who knows
Both Apple and At&t have enjoyed huge…HUGE success with the iPhone that any other brand would wet their pants for.
So, why all the hostility and anxiety?
Who cares if Droids outsell Apple? I don’t buy because of what other people buy. Some of us buy because the darn stuff is awesome!
To date: No probs with AT&T. No probs with iPhone 4. One very satisfied, loyal customer here.
Well, I am sure that Apple would love to distribute the iPhone on other carriers in the U.S., other than AT&T, but because of a major difference in the U.S. and most other markets, where the iPhone is available, it ain’t going to happen. In the iPhone’s other markets, there is one standard cell phone radio interface: GSM/UMTS. However, in the U.S., of the four major carriers, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint, two, AT&T and T-Mobile, use the GSM/UMTS standard, while the other two use CDMA.
That means that Apple would either have to make two iPhones, one of each for the different radio standards, and each of those phone would have different abilities, because CDMA can’t simultaneously transmit voice and data, or someone has to provide Apple with a radio chip is a dual mode CDMA and GSM/UMTS chip that meets the size, energy consumption requirements, and other requirements for the iPhone. Though it has been rumored that Qualcomm is building such a chip for Apple, that is just a rumor. And without that chip, Jobs is unlikely to approve two iPhones, each with different capabilities, iOSs, and form factors, especially given that it is GSM/UMTS which is the international standard, and the world is at most 12 months away from upgrading its networks to the 4G LTE standard, so Apple would make a second less capable, larger iPhone which would be obsolete in less than 12 months.
So it is unlikely that we will see an iPhone on any additional carrier, other than T-Mobile, before the major carriers deploy their 4G networks on the common LTE standard, which will permit Apple to make one iPhone that can run on all carriers’ networks.
And those are just the technical problems. The other major problem in dealing with Verizon is that Ivan Sidenberg, Verizon’s CEO, hates the shift in power that the iPhone caused among carriers and smartphone OEMs. Siedenberg believes that the network is and should be the source of value, with devices being nothing more than fungible appliances that connect to the carrier’s network and for which the carrier pays no premium. Steve Jobs takes the contrary view that Apple’s iOS devices are special and, thus, command a premium. Google has strengthened Sidenberg’s hand by providing the Android OS to OEMs for free, which takes all power from Android OEMs, as that they have to compete against each other for Verizon’s favor with fungible Android phones. This means that the iPhone is less likely than ever to appear on Verizon’s network, even after the deployment of LTE, as long as Verizon can get Android phones on the cheap and over which it has much greater control.
It anything, the iPhone will appear on T-Mobile’s network, and if Sprint abandons its WiMax nonsense and adopts LTE, which is the default international standard for 4G, Sprint will have a decent shot of getting the iPhone on a Sprint LTE network.
The antennagate is a classic case where media can build a story out of nowhere. Anyone familiar with the movie ‘Wag the Dog’ will understand what I mean, and this happens in real life as well.
Independent testers, reviewers, engineers and researches have tested iPhone 4 antenna performance. Pretty much ALL of them confirmed that its performance is at least AS GOOD or better than the competition, and certainly better than iPhone 3GS or 3G. Obviously, none of that objective, factual (even scientific) data can convince people who read on blogs that you can cripple your signal by holding it wrong (and even that has been known to happen to most other phones as well, as confirmed by many YouTube videos that PREDATE the antennagate).
Before Antennagate issue started saturating the blogosphere, support calls regarding reception on the device were lower than for the same period after 3GS (or 3G). Antennagate obviously made it so widely know that now everyone thinks their phone somehow has exceptionally bad antenna design. Talk about triumph of the competitor’s PR!
The fact remains, iPhone 4 has the best antenna design among its competition. This fact has been confirmed by independent, objective, scientific research and testing.
So, Mr. Misdirection, you seem to be truly living up to your name, as someone already mentioned (although they also inserted a profanity, which I won’t do).
The focus needs to be on (1) increasing iPhone 4 production capacity, and (2) opening that NC data center to increase data-serving capacity.
Without (1), Apple is not going to sell any more iPhones, no matter how many U.S. carriers offer it; you can’t sell something faster than you can make it, and ATT demand by itself is already maxing out supply, with significant waiting lists.
Without (2), a flood of new iPhone customers may overwhelm (or degrade) the existing infrastructure for the iTunes Store (including the App Store). With every new Mac, iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone customer, Apple takes on more data-handling responsibility. That’s one key purpose of the new NC data center, to allow supporting a significantly higher customer base with data services.
Once (1) and (2) are in place, THEN we can tell Apple they need to expand iPhone to multiple U.S. carriers “ASAP.” Fortunately, I think those pieces will be in place by the end of 2010.
Hey I like my pc it plays like games and still uses my iTunes just fine.
If the author here is right (and he isn’t), Apple will have to significantly ramp up their production rates. Contrary to what our (now deleted) contributor ‘Misdirection’ says, Apple in fact ARE making iPhones as fast as they can, and they ARE selling them as fast as they can make them. Plenty of evidence of that from various reliable and non-Apple sources.
However, the idea that there are millions of people who WANT an iPhone, but don’t want AT&T is a fallacy. For the past three years, research has been repeatedly done, and the conclusion has consistently been that the number of those people is MINUSCULE and wouldn’t significantly change the bottom line.
However, there is another group of people that aren’t in the above group (want iPhone, hate AT&T). These are ordinary Joes (and Janes), who walk into Radio Shack (or AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile/Sprint) store and ask for an iPhone. Any sales person worth their salt will end up making a sale to most of those ordinary Joe/Janes, even though many of them can’t sell them the iPhone. They’ll convince them that this other phone (Droid, MyTouch, Aria) is just as good or maybe even better. Other than us tech types who know tech bulsh!t when we see it, ordinary people tend to believe the expertise of a sales guy.
These are the sales where Android is gaining traction. Every carrier has multiple Android devices that are cheaper than the mainstream iPhone 4 ($200 one), and it doesn’t take too much effort to convince an ignorant person that they’re getting a great phone.