The end of exclusivity leading to big iPhone sales in Europe
By Darren Murph 
posted November 23rd 2009 12:21AM
posted November 23rd 2009 12:21AM
Go figure, right? You get a relatively hot phone out onto more carriers, and just like that, sales increase. It ain't rocket science, buster. As AT&T grins happily while enjoying a death grip on Apple's cash cow here in the States, things are a lot more wide open for consumers across the pond. In both France and the UK, the iPhone has been given the all-clear to be sold on multiple carriers, and according to research from Bernstein, the "widening of the distribution has boosted Apple's value market share to 32 percent in the latest quarter from 21 percent just three months earlier." The notes also mention that Apple's increase is coming at the expense of RIM, with over 600,000 iPhone handsets being sold during Q3 2009 in France alone. The point to all this madness? Oh, not much -- just to tell Sir Jobs that he can count on quite a bit more dough should he decide to sell this elusive "iPhone" device on Verizon in the US of A.
The power of marketing.
yes... power of marketing.
up here in canada, we saw so many big sales when rogers lost exclusivity.
there is no death grip on iphone. most people who want it will move to at&t. if you dont, well too bad. verizon will never have the iphone. no i dont care about rumors you read saying they will.
And your point is Nokia and others don't do marketing? Are not good at it? iPhone users are falling for marketing and folks like you are not? More like the power of fanboyism and cluelessness. Great to see so called gadget fans slink so easily into the politics.
Denial of reality. It just works.
Actually, fanboyism and cluelessness are often results of a great marketing campaign. Apple's doing a great job, apparently.
Droid!
The Motorola Droid has already failed. By the end of the year, Droids will be given away free for a contract and Motorola's cellphone division will be out of business. Verizon already spent more money on advertising the Droid than it will ever get back. Next on Verizons's smartphone push list will be the Palm Pixi.
You are so wrong it hurts! Droid rocks, people love it and it will only expand. Its the first time verizon hasn't gimped hardware, its a step in the right direction
Droid fail. Milestone rocks. Can the Droid do multi-touch? Can it be used worldwide? :P
Yes, the Droid can do multi-touch. There are applications that use it with no modding whatsoever. For some reason, however, multi-touch was left out of the Android OS in America.
So why isn't the iPhone on other carriers here in the US? Apple would make sooo much more money with people who refuse to switch to AT&T.
This is for the better. If the iPhone was on Sprint and Verizon then the Pre and the Droid would never have been able to get a foothold.
thank you
Now its a good question if they would.
I mean... i guess ATT must have made a killer deal with apple to get the rights to the phone.
If the iPhone was on Sprint and Verizon then the Palm and Motorola would have been forced to make even more innovative and advanced phones to compete, rather than just trying to make something on par with the iphone for other networks. All the exclusivity has done is slowed innovation in the market place.
Let me ask you this: If the iPhone was on Verizon, do you think that Motorola would have still released the Droid without built in multitouch?
"So why isn't the iPhone on other carriers here in the US? Apple would make sooo much more money with people who refuse to switch to AT&T."
Silly question but how do you know this is true? I certainly agree that there are people who would buy the iPhone but do not want to switch carrier but these potential sales have to be balanced against the money that AT&T is paying Apple for exclusivity. I am not defending this practice but I see comments like this much like the ones that claim Apple would make so much more money if they licensed OS X for other hardware. Typically these comments are flawed in their logic and, honestly, I think Apple knows their own business better than we do.
It's pretty much just been verified that apple will make a slew more sales by not having an exclusivity agreement with at&t. It just happened in Europe, why wouldn't it happen here?
These are the kind of numbers I was hoping to eventually see. Such numbers would imply that Apple would be might be willing to dump the exclusivity with AT&T to bring in more cash.
Sadly though, in the US, the iPhone would only get to run on T-Mobile and AT&T. Unless, of course, a CDMA chipset ends up in the next gen iPhone. We'll see I guess.
Why bother with CDMA when everybody, including Verizon, is going LTE? I'm sure Apple know this. Releasing a CDMA iPhone would appease some Verizon fanboys, but it would be a waste of time for Apple to fork their manufacturing lineup just for a product specific to one country (and one provider).
Verizon is looking at getting to LTE to 100% cover their current CDMA map by 2013.
I don't know if LTE is backwards compatible with CDMA but I am guessing no.
Apple's cycle for iPhones is June/July each year, and I don't expect them to roll out an LTE phone this year. Even if they did,, with the presumed incompatibility with CDMA, the iPhone would only work in certain markets, and fully by 2013. I don't see Apple wanting users to have a bad experience because of a network issue.
So, I come back to Apple needing to have a CDMA chip in the iPhone to get it compatible if it is going to have a reasonably servicable phone on the verizon network over the next 3 years.
It will be YEARS before Verizon LTE has fully replaced CDMA. And it will be YEARS before they completely turn off CDMA.
Remember the switch from analog to digital? That went on for many years before they finally switched off the analog portion of the towers... giving people enough time to finish their contracts, get new phones, etc.
If Verizon got a CDMA iPhone in 2010 or 2011, that's still plenty of time until LTE takes over in ~2013.
But, if it was 2012 and we were still having this conversation... then yes, it would be too late. But we've still got some time now.
@pika2000 >> "Why bother with CDMA when everybody, including Verizon, is going LTE?"
Well, the Droid and every other new phone that Verizon has right now is CDMA... was that a silly thing to do? I mean, Verizon knows they will be using LTE in the future... so why bother with CDMA today, right?
Apple would have to make a CDMA iPhone, sure. But guess what... ALL phone manufacturers make both GSM and CDMA devices. It's not that hard to do.
Will they? That's the question. But if Samsung, RIM, LG, HTC, and Motorola ave the knowledge to make both GSM and CDMA models... I'm pretty sure Apple could figure out how.
As far off as a full LTE conversion is, Verizon and phone manufacturers would be idiots to stop or delay putting out CDMA phones. It's about now...not 2013. Besides, in the next 3 years how many people are going to be changing phones or upgrading them? Who thinks to themselves "I am going to wait until 2013 to get a new phone because that's when LTE will be fully available"?
Why the f*ck only Verizon...they should release it on Sprint as a 4G phone...that would be soo cool!
As great as a WiMax-enabled iPhone would be, that doesn't sound too likely. They'd prefer to keep as small a product line as possible, revolving around one model for all GSM (and future LTE) networks. But trust me, I'd jump at the chance for a WiMax iPhone. Would be a worthy deal, knowing Sprint these days.
Yeah, it's pretty easy in a GSM only market like the europe. I can understand why Apple doesn't want to create several hardware version of it's phone because the US can't agree on a standard...
Exactly what I was going to say.
As much as you want Verizon to have it, they don't have a GSM network and I doubt Apple is going to alter their phone just for one company. Now if all our mobile networks were GSM, we would definitely have some good competition going.
LTE is GSM. Apple could put a LTE/GSM/CDMA radio (which will have to exist during verizon's transition period) and have it work on Verizon and ATT.
Wait.. Korea doesn't have GSM network (whole country is on CDMA) and they get iPhones. I think there are CDMA iPhones.
there are cdma networks that use sim cards in asia.
They don't? I guess someone should tell SK Telecom and KTF that the UMTS networks they operate don't exist.
So the article about Orange getting the iPhone in France says it's being sold unsubsidized. Does this mean that there is no longer anyone offering a subsidized iPhone in France? Or just a smaller subsidy than before? Or no change?
I would love to see the iPhone available on multiple carriers in the US but it would suck if it lead to prices going up significantly.
The iPhone is available unsubsidized in France but it's really expensive, like 600+ €. But it's of course available with subsidized contracts on the tree national carriers. Thanks to the competition created by the availability on multiple carriers, the data plans prices slightly decreased, but iPhone specific plans are still more expensive than normal plans (that also includes data).
ok, Lets do it here!!!!
Who would have guessed that more carriers means more sales? But shhh, don't tell AT&T that!
forget verizon. i dnt think iphone should go to verizon, they wud not be able to handle iphone any better than at&t. verizon shudnt even get a chance of getting iphone since theyre running their mouth about their little droid wit their "idont" commercials. keep the competition going between att and verizon and keep iphone on AT&T
and we will continue to see good devices in near future from verizon in order to compete with iphone...or atlease hopefully
And yet, with the exclusive deal with China Unicom, only 5000 iPhones sold in China in the first weekend. Cost is always an issue, and even if the phone were available on other networks, if the price wasn't heavily subsidized like AT&T's preposterous 17 month BEP, the iPhone wouldn't necessarily dominate.
Verizon wasn't willing to subsidize the iPhone and pay Apple upfront what AT&T offered, and I seriously doubt T-Mobile USA would have the cash to follow suit either.
The Chinese hate spending money on real goods. As long as it's cheap and looks somewhat close to the real thing, they'll buy it. They have no sense of pride in owning the genuine articles. They'd wear watches that said Bolex, bags that were named Ducci and drive cars called CMW's. That's the Chinese mentality. All their fakes will fall apart before their time, but that's how it is. The genuine Apple iPhone never stood chance of selling in China. Everyone carries iPones, iFones, xPhones, oPhones, or iPhoneys. A very odd culture, indeed.
ATT has made piles of money off of the iPhone... I think verizon would get in on it if they could.
apparently you have no idea how much money T-Mobile has!!!! I'm talking about T-Mobile not just T-mobile USA. For the record I hate T-Mobile they suck but they sure have ALOT of money
i read "china UNICORN" and the image in my head is just hilarious
"The Chinese hate spending money on real goods. As long as it's cheap and looks somewhat close to the real thing, they'll buy it. They have no sense of pride in owning the genuine articles."
That's pretty racist. It's not because Chinese 'culture' is against buying the real thing. It's because only a few decades ago the Chinese people were incredibly poor. By international standards, most Chinese still are. You would buy Bolex too if your grandparents almost starved to death during the 'Great Leap Forward'. In the 19th century, Charles Dickens hated America because we stole his copyrighted works. We were still a developing country, and we couldn't afford the 'real thing'. So be careful about saying, "That's the Chinese mentality. All their fakes will fall apart before their time, but that's how it is." A few decades from now, your car will likely be Chinese. I hope an "Average White Boy" can understand that some day.
its kinda nice to see the same thing in canada (although not mentioned here in the article) with bell, telus, and rogers offering it. i'm sure sales will increase here as well.
The iPhone is a world phone. And the world uses "GSM".
Verizon uses "CDMA", a dying technology.
It's up to Verizon to upgrade to "GSM" like a lot of carriers around the world.
You are ignorant. Downranked.
You are so totally right... Verizon SHOULD switch to GSM...
Oh wait... they are. LTE is a GSM standard.
wow get your facts straight, GSM is older than CDMA. CDMA still outperforms any GSM radio on the basis of call quality, speed and coverage. GSM units use less energy and you can easily swap phones with a sim card. What do you want in a carrier....
Upgrade to gsm.... LTE is next, gsm is crap
I would LOVE an iPhone on TMobile that can access their 3G service! But until then, I'm loving my iPhone 2G chuggin' along on TMs pipes..
Makes me wonder who still buys these iPhones, do people go through these things like hot cakes or something? Then again where do all the DSes go as well. I'm a bit sick of seeing iPhones in every child's hands these days, it has really turned into a toy in my eyes. I hope someone is able to give a proper smartphone that can appeal to an older audience, and not to kiddies. Same can be said with Blackberries. Then again, Sony's tactic didn't work against the DS.