The only segment where BYO phone is strong is in prepaid. You do actually save money by not being on a plan but this isn't the option most people go for. People don't see it as the "grown-up" option.
Not many people do you think buy an iphone from Apple for $1040(http://store.apple.com/au/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...). They get it from Optus or something for $10 p/m or free. http://personal.optus.com.au/web/ocaportal.portal?_nfpb=true...
We still need number portability and affordable mobile Internet, though. Ah well.
EDIT: s/India/New Delhi. I'm not sure about the state of mobile networks in other parts of the country.
But yes for instance in France it's like that: permanent exclusivity is illegal, though short temporary ones are allowed. Orange (illegal) exclusivity on the iPhone was broken in April 2009 and since then all operators are selling it.
Consequence : 2 million iPhones sold in 2009, more than 50% of the smartphone market shares, and 3G networks that have a hard time following the pace...
They've done it for years, but not in the US.
http://shop.nokia.co.uk/nokia-uk/searchresults.aspx?search_i...
http://store.nokia.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/shophome_10...
It's frustrating as a consumer that Verizon is incompatible with the massive hordes of unlocked GSM phones, but it might be a business advantage in the short-term for Verizon. In the long term, people who want phones like Nexus One will just switch carriers.
As a former Verizon customer and current iPhone lock-in, I would LOVE to switch from AT&T and Verizon if it were possible with the phone of my choice.
From the very beginning, everything I read convinced me that it's a superior transmission mode, both for me, the end user, and for the carrier.
As much as heavy-handed regulation makes me cringe, perhaps if we legislated modular rf sections, this would become a non-issue. Phones are small enough for that, now.
There are plenty of smaller parties in Europe they could gobble up to get a foothold, gain experience with the tech and the roll out on a much larger scale.
With that said, I don't think google has any real interest in being a carrier, as that isn't where they make their money. They can leverage the mobile network much like the internet and continue to make their truck load of money via targeted ads.
This is because the iPhone holds a significant portion of the smartphone market, but the smartphone market makes up only a small percentage of the total market
- http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/mobi... [List of Reports]
- http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs... [PDF, 92 Slides]
That article is all hype because the people this is news to, and the target market for a $500 cellphone don't have that big an intersection. I think everyone with a cellphone by now has been exposed to a carrier's store and seen prices for an off-contract phone. Hell, I'm guessing a lot of people have broken phones and been forced to pay off-contract prices - forcing the savvy to at least price out similar phones via alternate channels cough ebay. Pre-iPhone, they'd have a bigger point, but I'd think by now, the consumer smart-phone market (vs big-business' blackberries) is aware of certain things.
Am I being too hopeful?
Notice that they mention the online store prior to the Nexus One:
Well, today we're pleased to announce a new way for consumers to purchase a mobile phone through a Google hosted web store. The goal of this new consumer channel is to provide an efficient way to connect Google's online users with selected Android devices. We also want to make the overall user experience simple: a simple purchasing process, simple service plans from operators, simple and worry-free delivery and start-up.
The first phone we'll be selling through this new web store is the Nexus One ... It's the first in what we expect to be a series of products which we will bring to market with our operator and hardware partners and sell through our online store.
(quoting this here because I didn't see it directly quoted in the Ars article)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/our-new-approach-to-b...
Surely there are larger cell phone manufacturers that could've forced this issue a long time ago, but none of them have stepped up to do so, or so it would seem. So I'm all for Google giving it a shot and I'll keep my fingers crossed that others follow suit.
Except for all the other stores that do the very same thing. What a strange article.
