“Now that AT&T’s exclusive hold on the iPhone in the U.S. is over, with Verizon announcing that it will start selling Apple’s device on Feb. 10, other carriers are ready as well,” Brier Dudley reports for The Seattle Times.
“Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA would like to offer the phone on its network, which uses the same sort of wireless technology as AT&T,” Dudley reports. “‘We would be interested in offering the iPhone, but ultimately it is Apple’s decision,’ a T-Mobile spokeswoman said.”
Dudley writes, “My guess is Verizon has an arrangement with Apple giving it premium play until it begins offering the iPhone, after which we’ll hear about other carriers.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As our own SteveJack explained well over a year ago on December 23, 2009: iPhone isn’t the Mac, so stop comparing them. To draw an analogy between the Mac and iPhone platforms simply highlights… ignorance of the vast differences between the two business situations. Look at the iPod, not the Mac, to see how this will play out.
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.
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 44 different Android accessories whose total addressable audience numbers under 1 million each, or to make one or two for what’s [well 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.
