Re: [NTLK] [OT] AT&T - Unlocked!

On Jul 20, 2007, at 4:28 AM, Jochen Schäfer wrote:

> Steven Scotten schrieb:
>> On Jul 19, 2007, at 6:50 PM, Joshua Cearley wrote:
>>
>>
>> I fail to see how any of this is Apple's fault or a failing of the
>> iPhone. It's a GSM phone, so it won't run on Sprint or Verizon. CDMA
>> is dead-end technology and you can't sell CDMA overseas. Making the
>> iPhone GSM was the right thing to do. Locking it to one company is
>> the same thing that Nokia, Siemens, Samsung, Sony, Ericsson, LG and
>> every other cellphone maker does. Why pick on the iPhone when it's
>> the entire industry that needs fixing?
> Here in Germany we have the very same situation, but there is a
> difference. You can normally get a specific phone model at all the
> different carriers. E.g. the HTC smartphones are sold by O2 and
> T-Mobile. They make some changes to firmware (mostly some
> customizations), but these are essentially the same phones.
>
> So Apple and AT&T did something that is NOT the usual way to sell
> phones.
>

In the US market this is done all the time. The Razr is the prime
example. It started out GSM (Cingular only as I recall) and only
after a period of time did it make its way to other carriers. It
took about a year and a half I think before Motorola made a CDMA Razr
and then only Verizon had it. A little while after that I could get
mine with US Cellular but the Verizon V3c and the US Cellular V3c
were most assuredly NOT the same phone. EVERY carrier in the US
beats up the manufacturer on customizing features (Verizon is
notorious for this). They tell the manufacturers what features they
want enabled or disabled, the carrier and the network dictate what
features the phone will have.

So you are right Jochem but not as you thought -- Apple and AT&T did
something that is NOT the usual way to sell phones -- Apple told AT&T
this is the phone with the features we want to make, are you going to
make changes to your network to work with it? AT&T did (i.e. visual
voicemail). This is one of the reasons many are considering the
iPhone a revolutionary product in that it could change how phones are
designed and marketed.

I also find the SIM locking complaint to be silly, just how many
people buy a phone that is not sim locked to a carrier? I think
we're talking 1% uber-geek of the cellular market? How many people
even know they have a SIM? (I remember swapping one on my Nextel once
in the office and people looked at me slack jawed). How many people
even know if they have CDMA or GSM? We are talking very small
minorities, most people just want a phone that works and they could
care less what technology it is using. WE ARE NERDS, face this fact.

Unlike in the past there are a lot of non-nerds spending that kind of
money for the iPhone whereas before uber-geeks were a large part of
the market for a phone costing this much. Welcome to the future
where people who are not nerds have a phone that's as cool or better
than yours.

--Guy (self-confessed nerd)--
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Received on Fri Jul 20 08:09:44 2007