DISQUS

Doug · 2 years ago

Wow - this is huge news. Well reported Scott.

Peter Rojas · 2 years ago

AT&T has a five year exclusive on the iPhone (and subsequent versions), so it's irrelevant to the US market whether or not Apple has a CDMA version in the wings. Verizon's announcement may have been influenced by Apple, but what they're planning is so limited in scope -- they can still use all sorts of certification requirements to restrict what devices connect to its network -- that it's not clear to me that this will do much to usher in the sort of wireless nirvana we all hope for.

I think the more immediate impact of Verizon's announcement will be on non-phone devices -- not many people have noticed that the Kindle is the one of the first devices that isn't a phone or a laptop to sport a built-in broadband modem.

Scott Karp · 2 years ago

Hi Peter,

Five-year AT&T; exclusive is indeed a major caveat -- and no doubt that wireless nirvana is a very long way off.

But it would have been hard to imagine Verizon contemplating this even a year ago. That Apple had ANY influence on Verizon's announcement is pretty staggering. A year ago, Apple didn't matter in the world of wireless.

Is there an imaginable scenario where the five-year AT&T; exclusive doesn't play out? We're talking about Apple here, who beat the iPhone moniker out of poor Cisco.

Speaking of non-phone devices, what if you put a broadband modem into an iPod Touch? (Yeah, wacky on the surface, but there's always the myth of convergence.)

Peter Rojas · 2 years ago

I'm sure the iPhone played a role, as did the Open Handset Alliance, the upcoming 700MHz auction, and a variety of other factors, including the Kindle. I'd love to know what role the Kindle played in all this. Amazon went with Sprint rather than Verizon, for the Kindle, even though Verizon has the bigger network (which would ensure more Amazon users could actually take advantage of the Kindle's wireless capabilities). Broadband service hasn't grown as quickly as the carriers had anticipated, and it's not hard to imagine that Verizon sees the potential revenue opportunity in non-phone devices connecting over Verizon's data network. They want to get more people pushing data over their network, and this announcement is meant to encourage manufacturers of stuff like ebook readers and GPS navigators and yes, MP3 players, to start thinking about how they can wedge EV-DO modems into their devices.

Ryan Holiday · 2 years ago

Please. This is exactly the opposite of what Apple wanted. More simply, if it was what they wanted...they would have done it. Instead they pursued the a model that is profitable only off the subsidies that this announcement makes slightly more obsolete. Apple has to power to disrupt the industry if they wanted and the explicitly chose not to. That it changed in spite of them, I feel, is much more due to Google and OpenSocial than the relatively insignificant sales of the iPhone.

http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2007/11/researc...

Umair is right.

Ian Betteridge · 2 years ago

I hear from mobile phone people that the iPhone is nowhere near being sold at a profit. Which, of course, means that Apple is making all its profits from its revenue sharing deals.

And that is why it needs to keep the phone as locked to its chosen providers. An iPhone on any network but AT&T is, effectively, a loss for Apple.

Scott Karp · 2 years ago

Ian,

Isn't the iPod Touch built on the same platform as the iPhone? That isn't being subsidized -- do you think Apple is selling the Touch at a loss? And if not, how could the delta in the economics of the Touch and the iPhone be so great that the iPhone be sold at a loss and the Touch not? Doesn't make sense.

Rob · 2 years ago

News? Yes. Huge news? I'm skeptical. Verizon needs to "approve" all devices first and don't you think they are just a head of doing this before government (Big Brother) forces them to?

The U.S. is still tremendously behind the rest of the world in wireless. Perhaps this is a small step in the right direction.

Rob · 2 years ago

Some great commentary:

http://gigaom.com/2007/11/27/what-it-means-why-...

Ryan Watkins · 2 years ago

The iPhone is an amazing little toy, and Apple will reap the benefits of introducing the first-of-its-kind device for quite some time.

Howard Owens · 2 years ago

For a variety of odd reasons ... I wound up in western new york with three phone plans ... an expiring Verizon plan, a new Sprint plan for my wife's phone, and a Sprint plan through work.

My cost to switch my own phone was zero. I just needed to wait another month for that old Verizon plan to expire, but when I canceled as I planed to do anyway, I said, "yeah, I got an iPhone." (dig).

Because I've experienced both Verizon and Sprint in this market, I have some idea of what their service is like here.

I'm so, so, so happy with both my iPhone and AT&T's service here (as compared to Verizon and Sprint) that for Christmas (shh, this is a surprise), I'm getting my wife and iPhone and happily paying Sprint's termination fee on her current phone.

Ian Betteridge · 2 years ago

While the iPod touch and iPhone share the same platform there are many significant differences which make the iphone much more expensive to build. Of course, there's the radio, but you can add a much more powerful battery, Bluetooth, speaker, and so on. Hold an iPhone in one hand and the iPod in the other, and you can feel the difference (I own both)