Google: Android will outsell iPhone, we still love ya Steve
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Mar 14th 2008 4:47AM
posted Mar 14th 2008 4:47AM
Watching Google tiptoe around its relationship with Apple as it rolls out Android is one of the most enjoyable aspects of watching the industry these days. This is perfectly illustrated in the words of Rich Miner, group manager for Google's mobile platforms, who said, "there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone." A truthful statement in all likelihood assuming that the OS is robust upon its global release later this year and available on handsets from HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and LG as expected. Miner then took a few shots at the iPhone SDK saying, "There are things I saw people doing with the first version of the Android SDK that it seems like you can't do with the iPhone at least at the moment." He then noted that the SDK had been downloaded 750,000 times (compared to Apple's 100k in 4 days) as of February. Naturally, he then applied a thick, brown coat of public relations salve saying, "[If I were a developer] I'd certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I'd be developing for both platforms." Kumbaya my BossEricSchmidtSitsOnTheAppleBoard, kumabaya...
If it has to take on the iPhone, it needs to have a good UI. And thats exactly the best part of Android, the open-ness. There will be thousands of different GUIs for users to choose from, and as seen before, it has the potential to be awesome. Whatever its current state is now, the only thing that matters is that it can run even on slow processors. The apps and programs will be made by the thousands of people using it. Android has IMMENSE POTENTIAL to take on anything. And obviously it will outsell iPhone, its a free platform compared to the iPhone which is a friggin phone.
to be fair, lots of things that haven't been released have lots of potential.
It's a case of wait and see with Android. I think it's getting a lot of hype but until the products hit the retail channels, I will reserve judgement. Late this year for the first products, they say.
Plus a few years to mature, I say. Google has the cash to do something good, but whether they do or not is up in the air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(mobile_phone_platform)
Right now, it's (deservedly or not) lots of hype, little substance.
you know when people are not that interested in a topic... when the first comment is a frigging paragraph ;)
It isn't that hard to outsell the iphone.
All you need is a decent phone offered in both CDMA and GSM. How about Motorola Razr? That's success right there.
"There will be thousands of different GUIs for users to choose from,..."
Rarely is that a plus point.
Here I'm thinking of Gnome versus KDE.
If there isn't a sound, base UI in place, then all of Google's efforts are largely self-defeating...
I for one, never loved Steve...
The iphone is now a teenager and android is still an infant. There is a long road and many revisions to go.
If it has to take on the iPhone, it needs to have a good UI. And thats exactly the best part of Android, the open-ness. There will be thousands of different GUIs for users to choose from,
There is your problem right there...
The entire reason Apple products are so successful is because Apple imposes very rigid guidelines on how stuff works. Geeky folks lambast the company for being so closed and for their tight control, but it is Apple's rigidity that allows them to make products that have a reputation for ease of use and reliability.
Android will be a design by committee product with a bunch of bozo executives from clueless companies like Motorola and HTC all trying to pull the platform in whatever hot technical direction they read about in an in-flight magazine.
Remember - for all of Google's hype, they have only truly succeeded in dominating one bit of the market (search). Some of their other products are strong, but the vast majority of their product lineup is half baked beta ware. Apple has a stream of knock out products on the books delivered by the current team.
@OneLove
Android is not an infant, it is still pre-natal. Has not even been born.
Evaluating Android now is literally counting your chicks before they have hatched.
How many successful and stable open source apps are there? And how long did the stable ones take to become stable? One of the few successful, well known ones I can think of is Firefox. Even at that, there are MANY people whose never heard of it. Failures? Open office. It has been in development FOREVER and 99.99% of people who KNOWS of Open Office still use MS Word.
You gotta remember, most people can't unlock an iphone even w/ a 3 step guide. Your sisters, girlfriends, parents, and business friends won't know how to upgrade this Android thing-of-a-jigga.
But if Android ever does succeed, its going to take more a few years. By then, many things would have changed. Bottom line is, most people would like to just use their phone, not constantly tinker with it.
@Brian
You are actually questioning the success of any open source applications?? You have to be kidding me? Open source as a concept has been incredibly successful, From operating systems to reusable software libraries and components, to end user software.
- Linux and Apache run 50% of all web servers on the internet.
- Firefox/Thunderbird have a significant share of the market
- open source is very popular in software/web development, think: LAMP, Eclipse, GCC, PHP, Perl, TCL/TK, Python, Ruby, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SqlLite, Subversion, Mono,
and just about every web application framework/app server/ content managements system (Zope, DJango, Zoop, Drupal, DNN, Jboss, etc) known to man.
- open source tool and utilities are used extensively. Some examples include freeNas, Samba, RealVNC, lighttpd, Squid, Clamwin, TrueCrypt, Wireshark, Asterisk, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Putty, STunnel, QEMU, Snort, CygWin, NMap, Ethereal etc etc.
- Many, if not the majority of sucessful commerical applications not only use some form of open source software components in their software, but also use open source IDEs, compilers, and debuggers to create it in the first place.
- Linux as well as BSD variants are very popular in high reliability servers and embedded systems.
- open source is also very widespread in the scientific world, including molecular biology and DNA research, computational and analytical chemistry, astrophysics and astronomy, applied mathematics and engineering, and other areas benefiting from computational models and simulation.
- open source is also very popular in end-user apps such as, Abiword, Open Office, Scribus, Audacity, SongBird, GIMP, Blender,Dia, Xara, Paint.net, Inkscape
Miro, Adium, Pidgin, Xvid, VLC player, MythTV, VirtualDub, AviSynth, ImageMagick, POV-Ray Azureus, and a million other apps.
"Kumbaya my BossEricSchmidtSitsOnTheAppleBoard, kumabaya..."
my first laugh today :)
You have to be pretty stupid to compare Android to the iPhone. One's a piece of FREE software and one's a piece of hardware.
Now if you want to compare Android to Windows Mobile or Symbian... I ain't stoppin' ya. Have at it. But from Google's point of view, all THEY have to do is compete with Microsoft/Nokia to make sure their OS gets on more phones then the other 2. It's up to the manufacturers to do the iPhone comparing.
Dude, FYI Apple is both a software and a Hardware company...
The iPhone SDK has restrictions in its license that make many kinds of applications just not possible to be developed and accepted by Apple. I actually blogged about this in great detail 4 days ago: http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/03/09/the-iphone-sdk/
The Android SDK on the other hand does not have such restrictions, but instead the OS itself seems to be robust enough to ensure security.
So? And who says that when Android, whenever it is launched, won't have such restrictions?
It won't have such restrictions, because it's an open platform. The iPhone is not. Do some research.
"we still love ya Steve"
"Uh, duh" coming from Engadget?
lol ... yeah, we get it!
dude, he wasn't speaking for himself in the title; he was personifying google.
was that not perfectly clear from reading the article?
@ CB17
How were you proposing to stop people comparing the Iphone with Android?
not one thing accept being open has impressed me about android yet, it really looks like a big disappointment.
The fact that it IS so unrestricted and diverse will ultimately be its downfall.
As much as numbskulls bitch about the iPhone's controlled environment - Apple know what they are doing. This environment is there for several reasons. The iPhone is going to be the platform of the future.
The IQ level around here is such that there is no point in me trying to explain this in less than biblical length without having to use words of more than one syllable.
I will repost this in 2 years or so.
"Apple is better than any alternatives, and if you don't understand that it's because you are inferior and stupid"
So in short, Apple makes a phone for stupid people, but the people here are too stupid to realize it, and you think they are too stupid to be explained why they are too stupid to run a modern smartphone.
Superiority complex much?
I happen to agree with this person. The restrictions are mostly good.
Having a million interfaces for one platform (see 1st comment) is not something I want. That's what gives you the clumsy UI Linux has.
Same goes for applications on Windows - make it too open, and things _will_ go wrong. That's simply not appropriate for a mobile platform.
@Sursur
iPhone's for stupid people eh? Dumbed down? Because you can tinker with an OS clearly makes you 'smart' I guess. Perhaps you can try designing a poster or a catalog, perhaps you'll know everything there is to know about CMYK, overprinting, crop marks, character styles, paragraph styles, leading, tracking, kerning, etc. etc. Maybe you're seeing my point, but here goes…
Apple DESIGNED an OS that allows it to be user-friendly and easy to use for the mass audience. Why? Because that's what design means, to create clear layouts and systems that communicate effectively to their audience. Guess I should mention I have a BFA in graphic design.
My point is this, most people could care less about all the tinkering they can do in an OS, because they are too busy USING it to communicate with their companies or clients or to find out when little Timmy's soccer game is.
Putting Android in the hand of developers on an open platform is wonderful, but it begs to question whether those developer will create effective and clear user interfaces. Hopefully they will work with a team of UI designers and visual designers to work out how the user will interact with it, otherwise it's just another wasted OS. Oh, and of course it'll sell a lot, because it has a massive amount of phone companies on board.
Some Nobel Laureate economists once thought up something called "network externalities," meaning that the more people there are using something, the exponentially more useful it becomes to each individual user. Any operating system benefits from this by virtue of the developer community; the more users, the more developers want to code for that platform, which creates more value and more people adopt it...and this cycles around to grow the platform (I mean, do you think Windows became the dominant OS on its /technical/ merits??). The openness of Android and the ubiquity and cheapness of compatible hardware will ultimately secure its place as the dominant handheld platform...at least for a while.
So, to sum up, you're wrong.
"Putting Android in the hand of developers on an open platform is wonderful, but it begs to question whether those developer will create effective and clear user interfaces"
The market will decide that. Don't like the interface? Too clumsy? Don't buy it.
Anyone know when this going to be available?
I would have to say that you are smoking crack to think that this OS (or anything with the OS on it) will outsell the iPhone.
First off, like noted above, I wanna point out it's not a phone but merely an OS.
Second, have you ever seen hype like there is around the iPhone for anything? Maybe the Razr as far as cells go.
Third, Apple has marketing down to a science. Their commercials and ads are amazing. You cannot deny that.
I hope you know that HTC sold more phones with WM on them in the same time Apple sold its 4 million iPhones, and that HTC is making an Android phone.
Apple likes high margins. They are not ever going to compete for the meat of cellphone market, except in USA where people prefer dumbed down over cheap.
Whether this OS appears on more phones than OS X mobile depends on what hardware is required. If its requirements are similar to Windows Mobile then I don't think it will outsell the iphone. The fact that its free and they are pushing so hard to get developer support will certainly help it though. What the iPhone has going for it is that programs designed for it will also work on iPods. As time goes on and the prices on the iPod Touch are reduced, the potential market for developers will expand rapidly. You won't see Google mention this fact.
Would you be happier if they said that Android will outsell OSX mobile? Either way they're saying that Android will outsell the iPhone since Apple won't let anyone else use their mobile OS.
@Darkest Daze
You're missing the point. The iPhone is just ONE phone, but Android can be installed on thousands of devices of different shapes and sizes. I'm NOT saying that we the consumer can't compare Android devices to the iPhone. But clearly when you're talking about android vs. iPhone in regards to google vs. Apple, you have to understand that google isn't competing with apple. They're competing with microsoft.
Well for me the best part about the iPhone applications is that many will run on the 'none phone' iPod touch. To me phones me work and work gives me a headache, iPod means free time and messin about. With good free WiFi connections popping up all over the place as the years pass the phone thing is wearing a bit thin with me, well, more to the point the whole contract thing is wearing my pocket thin.
I'd love to see a WiFi device (bluetooth for good measure, accelerometer, all that stuff), just a 300ppi 4inch multi touch borderless screen running a completely open OS like Android with a great SDK that even I could understand, no contracts, just a screen of fun you can put in your pocket, simple.
Right. "Easy to use" equals "dumbed down", therefore the iPhone is for "dumb people". Especially "dumb Americans".
Oh, and Apple users are arrogant elitists.
Only on Engadget does aggressive ignorance strut around like the king of the world.
"Oh, and Apple users are arrogant elitists."
Thanks. You're so kind. And you have never even met me.
"Right. "Easy to use" equals "dumbed down", therefore the iPhone is for "dumb people"."
I disagree. There's complex and there's needlessly complex. Guess which a smart person would choose? I use both Microsoft and Apple products so I think I am allowed to compare. I own an XBox 360. My iPhone replaces a Windows Mobile '03 smartphone that I owned for 3 years. I'm typing this comment on a Dell Precision Workstation. Microsoft's products are needlessly complex.
@chris
im quite sure he was being sarcastic. so basically you've just been arguing with someone who agrees with you. you made a lot of smart points in your comment , but they were all underscored by a huge dollop of stupidity. congratulations.
I'm familiar with addabox's previous comments and I can guarantee he wasn't being sarcastic.
Must have me confused with a different Addabox-- I was reacting to the silly notion that the iPhone's ease of use, which is actually its strongest selling point, somehow makes it "dumb". Or that the cluttered, difficult to use UIs of most phones, which have helped limit market penetration of general purpose computing devices, makes them (or their users) "smart".
There's room for both.
Rite.....................
Your post was one word and you couldn't even spell it right? That qualifies as Epic Fail of the Day.
Apples and oranges again. the iPhone is a hardware and software product produced by Apple, Android is a software product marketedby Google. Google wouldn't have to do much to make sure they outsold the iPhone...
I think we might be confusing who would buy iphones and android powered phones. It wont be my mom or father in law typically. They will buy the run of the mill clamshell phone that maaaay take a picture if they understood how to work the camera or send a SMS.
Gadget geeks, thats where this conversation is most likely centered around and there is a whole variety of dorks for and against the different platforms but they arent in any way a majority of phone users.
This is like a battle between two ugly fat girls at the railroad tracks in a redneck town relative to the rest of the world's phone users. Nobody really cares except us.
The issue with your argument is that there is a relatively high likelihood that android could end up being the OS on a lot of those "run of the mill" phones you speak of. That's what flexibility can do.
That being said... I think it points to how making arguments one way or the other on this issue is a little silly. As many people have pointed out, it's definitely apples and oranges. I'm sure windows mobile handsets have outsold the iphone by a huge margin since it's launch... but that really doesn't mean much. My Blackjack was around a hundred bucks and even my old 8125 was only around 200 when I bought it. I have different options for windows mobile... and some of them are much cheaper than others and a lot of them are definitely cheaper than the one and only "mobile OSX" phone. I like having a keyboard, I like having 3G (among other things)... and there are several handsets that run windows mobile and fit that bill for me right now... and I don't LOVE windows mobile, but I do prefer it to anything else out there at the moment.
I've thought about getting an iphone, but for me, there are better options... and it has little to do with the OS. There just happens to be only one (besides capacity) iphone and it costs too much and I have certain preferences that prevent me from justifying spending so much.
I would say they both have different markets for the first few years. Apple already have it's fan base and it's reputation hence you pay for it. Whereas Android it's yet to prove itself to the people, but it can run on a cheaper phones. They created a great buzz, but they need more to persuade people who actually wants to pay a lot of money for a phone which is known to be very good.
However in the longer term i can see them coming in each other's market place. And that competition will be good for us end users.
Other problem i see with Android that they don't design their own hardware like Apple does hence for them to make sure that hw sw works flawlessly is a mayor challenge. Google works with a good number of manufacturers and it would probably take a very heavy involvement with the handset manufacturers to bring it up to the standard of the iPhone. I anticipate that Android phones will be only as good as their hardware manufacturer will be. Some of them will be very poor an some of them will excel.
Let's wait and see, but i wouldn't discount the power($) of Google!
Only a truly stupid person would generalize about how stupid or not a person is by the phone they choose to use.
I'm still confused as hell about this Android business...is it a phone? What the hell is it supposed to do and WHY is it being compared to the iPhone?
Plus are there any pictures of what this phone will look like even? Cuz it really doesn't matter how great it is on the inside if it doesn't look half as decent on the outside.
Say what you will about the iPhone but the thing is damn sexy....
Android is an open OS being developed by Google presumably for use on mobile phones. It would be used by phone manufacturers like HTC for example (or franchises like Sprint, Verizon etc.), and people are comparing it to the iPhone because Android seems to be the first honest attempt outside of Apple to make a phone UI that's designed well.
Because it's open, anybody would be able to use it for their phone, and presumably customize it for their specific hardware. A more accurate comparison would be to Windows Mobile, except Android is free and anybody can use it.
http://code.google.com/android/
"Android will outsell iPhone"
Ya, probably because they will ACTUALLY release it in Canada...
The first, and most important, part of this discussion is noted here by Erick.
Both OSs on both phones don't mean a whole lot when it comes to the general public. If you think the average Wal-Mart shopper is going to be hunting down a cell phone simply because its running Android, you're nuts.
Don't get me wrong. I shop there too. Sometimes I have to. Thing is, looking around there, it's not a big techie type of store with techie types of shoppers. Hell, Best Buy is really not even such a store in reality. It just plays one on tv.
The iPhone is badass plain and simple. As a former three different generation Treo user (ending with my old Treo 650) and even delving into Windows Mobile with a Sprint phone I had once, I can tell you that the iPhone does it all well. Its a great music and video device, PIM and phone. Nothing has ever really done that for me before this. And I flat out loved my Treo 650. It was the closest.
Greatest idea ever.
Android......... on the iPhone.
How can Android "outsell" the iphone, when it's free?? Steve Jobs/Apple 1 Google 0
"will outsell iPhone?"
No kidding, Einstein, Google isn't making a phone. They're making software and that's it. I think they're doing a great job too, they're going to have no shortage of customers, but to compare what they are doing with the iPhone is like apples and oranges.
Besides, as businesses the real question is bottom line right? Well Google's potential revenue sources are: Licensing Fees (paid by handset manufacturer, passed along to the consumer) and Advertising (whatever annoying/helpful doodads that get to try and buy the internet's worthless stuff). Apple's revenue sources are: Profit Margin on $400 cellphone and Unique renewable carrier revenue sharing agreements.
Apple's doing what Apple has always done, moving at its own pace, growing when it can (iPod), but not seeking that growth head-on, but rather focusing on making a product that THEY like and love using, always a peripheral vision towards market and mind share.
Is Google's Android going to outsell iPhone? Absolutely. Enough low-tier handset manufacturers will make cheap touchscreen phones and license Android for their use, and the sales from a $99 device like that will probably be enough to "outsell" but I'd be apt to wager that it won't be "out-profiting" the iPhone for years to come.
FWIW, I think Android is great. I hope everyone who feels the need to hate on the iPhone can get an Android device with totally open software frameworks, 3G, a user-replaceable battery, and GPS so that they can finally be happy. Whatever it takes to shut them up.
He's kind of stating the obvious. If you're developing a phone app PERIOD you need to make it on as many "platforms" in the cell space as possible. Sure, it's easy to say that an iphone app could share similarities with an android app due to touch screen, but then again, what about Wimo6 HTC Touch? What about non-touch screen android phones?
Might as well make it for all phones if we're playing that game.
In either case. Boo iphone and yay android. :)
It's hard to compare the Android to the i-phone as they both currently are. i-phone will win that argument hands down. But the open source ideology has the potential to produce a better product in time. I'd like to keep my current Tmobile account and be able to browse free starbucks wifi on my phone. This seems at least possible on an open source phone. On the i-phone? not so much.
Hate to tell you that Starbucks has signed with AT&T to switch over from T-mobile. So, iPhones will have free reign at Starbucks in the near future. But, luckily for you, from what I understand, AT&T is letting T-mobile users surf free at Starbucks, but I wouldn't count on that for too long.
If Google's Andriod ends up being like any one of the tons of beta crap they have lying around unfinished, then I would say it prob won't be a great OS for 1 or 2 years once they finally finalize the whole thing and get the kinks worked out.
Just another case of a company with too much money trying to dip their toes into as many unfamilar waters as possible and no matter what they do people are still going to worship them just cuz they are Google.
I'm guessing the anti-Apple zealots are going to love this, even though it's comparing an open mobile OS to a single piece of hardware + closed OS. Wow, even Google has some idiots working for them.
There's room for both SDKs. They probably both have their own strengths and weaknesses. Right now the iPhone SDK is targeted for one cellphone and it's hardware. Maybe it won't do everything for everyone, but it will have strengths to sell very well. Just because Android is totally open and you can do anything you want with it, doesn't mean it's going to be perfect for everyone. There may be plenty of fancy applications that wind up crashing as much as applications crash on the WinMobile platform. Everything is just talk now. We have to wait to see how these SDKs work in the real world. In a few months we'll be able to see if the iPhone and the SDK lives up to it's hype. It won't be perfect, but it should be very good and will help boost iPhone sales quite a bit.
this is stupid.. seriously!
Android is for everyone.. and OSX is just on Apple's own product iPhone. unfair competition like 5 against one!
Time to sell your Google Stock!!
In the end, I think its clear that google will push out more copies of its OS than apple. While not a huge apple fan my self, I have to applaud Jobs for causing a huge ripple in the Cell Phone industry. Maybe Motorola and Nokia and others were already heading in the direction of better UI, better input methods, ect, but Apple did cause them to speed things up. With the Android OS, there are alot of possibilities, but it will be up to the manufacturers to take that and turn it into something amazing, and for that, we have to take a wait and see approach. At least the bar has been raised.
I definitely agree that Apple, and the iPhone specifically, was a catalyst for Android. Talk about the shot heard round the world, people are finally starting to figure out that your phone interface doesn't have to suck. Whether Android is successful or not, the important thing is that people are going to start demanding more from their phone UI.
can someone talk about the marketing aspect? it took apple 1 year of actual hype and less than 1 year of actual product use to solidify the name: "iphone" into the minds of EVERYONE. 100% of all my NON-tech savy friends know what the iphone is. several of them actually bought the thing too. I cant say the same for windows mobile. How will the name "Andriod" fit in all of this? It might be a stupid point...but if the argument is who will outsell who, it should be brought up.
Bring on the full speed gba & snes emulators for android... lol people I am telling you the cellphone is going to end up swallowing so many devices. It is the ultimate convergence device. All we need is cell phones with built in 1080p projectors and it is going to replace our TV's. The future is looking bright as long as we dont die from global warming or enter world war 3 or the world nukes itself to death or a meteor crashes into us or we enter another ice age or get hit with giant floods or blizzards or peak oil causes humanity to roll back into savagery. Oh and there's always that super ultra great depression looming over our heads with the state of the world economy.
I think one thing alot of people are missing is that the "openess" of Andriod is great in all, but because its just an open OS and not a locked down piece of hardware, in the end the service providers will ultimatly rip out what ever they dont like...that is unless you buy a phone unlocked.
Most avereage americans go to their cell providers and buy a phone with a 2 year contract. Because they dont want to buy an unlocked phone for 350-400$ they get a contract and end up paying 99$. And thats fine in all until you realize that alot of the times these cell providers gimp the phone for their benifit.
Case in point, I had a phone that would have let you (if it was unlocked) put MP3s on it and then set those as a ringtone. But my provider removed that feature from the phone, and its probably because they wanted consumers to buy their 15 second crappy ringtones for 1.99$.
Most avereage american cell phone buyers just want something that works, and if it looks cool and has nifty features all the better. The main key of succsess despite the high price point of the Iphone, is that it has the Ipod generation backing it, and people are not usally acustomed to all the features the Iphone has (full featured internet comes to mind).
Sure alot of the Iphones features have been done before on different phones, but for the most part those were the "buisness" type phones, and your average mom and dad, or teenage kid wouldnt buy into one of those unless their job demanded it. The Iphone took those sort of things and made it mainstream, or as mainstream as you can get with a 499$ pricetag. And because they have such tight control over their software and the hardware all of the features APPLE wanted to get passed on...got passed on.
Because I can bet you, the one thing AT@T hates the most about the Iphone is that is cuts into their music ringtone market. If it was up to them they would have never wanted people to be able to use Itunes with the Iphone, they would have loved to sell you all of their ringtones, and games and wallpapers and other over priced media. But they rolled with it because they knew the Iphone would have a huge market to go off of (Ipods).
So I think, unless theres some way for phone makers to cut out the cell providers from stripping features out of the OS, then it becomes a moot point on how "open" it is, and until Apple came into the phone market no other phone maker stood up to the service providers.
I would think the only way to get full benifit from Andriod would be to buy an unlocked version of the phone.
Now I know some people might tell me Im totally wrong, because they dont really lock down WM or other things like that. But I think that its because those phones go for the "buisness" type crowd. If andriod were to be put into middle-of-the-line phones Id be willing to bet that features and capabilities would be locked out and shut down.
So all in all, Im not trying to say OSX or Andriod is better, Im just suggesting that its still up for the Adroid phone makers to push the cell providers as Apple did to let them have more control of the OS. Because if theres one thing the cell providers want, its to turn a profit, and if everyone can port wallpapers and ringtones and other media things from their computer to their phone bypassing the cell company...well they wouldnt be turning much of a profit Im guessing.
Sorry for all the typos, its late at night and I was trying to speed type that stuff out.