CarrierExclusivity
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UK carrier in talks to make Nokia Lumia 920 a British LTE exclusive, says Financial Times
We're hoping for big news from UK carrier partnership Everything Everywhere over the next couple of months -- not just the first real LTE service in the British Isles (as if that wasn't enough), but also new handsets to put that bandwidth to use. According to the Financial Times, the conglomerate is now in talks with Nokia to make that happen, with the LTE-sporting Lumia 920 standing to become an Everything Everywhere exclusive if the negotiations end happily. There's nothing official to confirm it at this point, but Nokia struggled to win over some carriers with its last batch of Lumias and has now made it clear that it's open to alternative strategies, just as it already has a special relationship with AT&T in the States. Of course, by the time the Lumia 920 reaches the UK -- likely in early November -- there could well be another honest-to-goodness 4G superphone in its midst.
Apple COO says it's not married to iPhone exclusivity, still on track to sell 10m this year
Although we'd been hearing that Apple had slowed down iPhone production, the company is still on track to hit its goal of selling 10m units this year, according to COO Tim Cook. Cook, speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor's conference in Vegas, also said that "Apple is not married to the single, exclusive-carrier model," and that Apple is open to new ways of selling the iPhone. That's an interesting change in tone from the usual "we need carrier relationships to make things like Visual Voicemail work" lines we've heard, but it's not necessarily out of the blue -- we're tempted to say Apple's relatively hands-off approach to unlockers and jailbreakers is actually a direct result of that attitude. Of course, that doesn't mean anything's going to change in the States soon, since AT&T has that five-year exclusive deal, but it could mean interesting things are in store elsewhere.
Apple iPhone on AT&T for five years?
There are carrier exclusivity agreements, and there are carrier exclusivity agreements -- and Apple's iPhone deal must have been pretty sweet for Cupertino to guarantee their new hotness to AT&T and AT&T alone for five friggin years. USA Today reports the supposed half-decade deal precludes Apple from developing a CDMA handset in that time (duh), meaning that if you live in the US and don't want to move to AT&T, it's going to be 2012 before you even have a chance at an iPhone. Better still, Today reports that Cingular's arch-nemesis Verizon is claiming to have an iPhone-killer in the wings. According to Denny Strigl, Verizon CEO, "We do have a very good response in the mill. You'll see that from us in the late summer." It's war, people, make no mistake about it.[Thanks, Eric]
