You can't even say it's a unique business model. It's how Microsoft became the standard for the world in the PC arena.
Microsoft became what they are by bullying vendors into charging for DOS and then Windows on every PC they sold whether the user wanted it or not. For that they were tried and convicted as a monopoly - and yet it's the engine that still powers them to this day.
Google gets no such default revenue from phone manufacturers for Android. It will be interesting to see if they continue to fund it from their web based ad revenue and for how long. At least it doesn't have a beta tag...
Maybe this will be the first Android phone that can use more than 256 MB for apps. Or won't be so slow that it lags when scrolling the home screen like the Droid. Or has an actually usable on screen keyboard. Maybe even multi-touch that does everything that Apple's multi-touch does and isn't dog slow. How about a workable process for syncing everything including multi-media? No Android phone to date has had any of these things. So pardon me if I don't get too excited about yet another Android phone until Google cares as much about their smartphone OS as they care about search. it is amusing that people seem to think because everyone and their brother is announcing Android phones that sheer numbers will overwhelm the iPhone. Didn't work for Windows Mobile or Blackberry who had many years head start. Maybe the day will come when Android is as good as the iPhone OS/hardware combination but it's going to be awhile yet before we see that, if ever.
I don't know if it's been linked to yet, but the WSJ is saying that Google will directly sell a Google branded phone, made by HTC, unlocked and without a contract. The Nexus One.
Which means, just off the top of my head:
--Either Google will have to lose money on each handset or sell it for quite a bit more than people are used to paying. Yes, I know subsidization is a false economy, but the average consumer is unlikely to see it that way, especially if they still have to pay the same amount on their monthly bill. The upside of not being under contract isn't a huge selling point, IMO, for most folk.
-- Google will now have its Zune moment, where it is suddenly in competition with its hardware partners. If the Nexus One is a huge success, that's a pretty big problem, if it's not, it's just status quo, so I'm not sure what the upside for Google is. Maybe they just want to get a reference platform out there, but it's a pretty risky way of doing it.
-- And, If Google really wants the Nexus One to be a huge success, they need to make it better than the competition, which includes those very hardware partners. Since they wrote the OS, any improvements they make will be regarded as improvements to the OS that they are withholding from those partners. If they don't withhold such improvements, then the Nexus One won't really have any way of distinguishing itself from other Android handsets. To the extent that improvements are a matter of integration with the HTC hardware, HTC has motivation to copy any such integration, again negating any competitive advantage. I don't see a good way out of this bind.
When MS decided to dump "Plays for Sure" and make the Zune, they made something new that none of their partners had. Google can't do that. Not sure how this plays out.
They should have got Motorola to design it for them. Motorola can pull off some neat designs.
If that's actually a shot of the final design of the real phone, the slight taper and silver bottom give it a 70's "modern" look, to me. Like a prop from Space: 1999. But who knows, maybe retro futuristic is the new brown.
The funny thing is, is that nine times out of ten the "MDN take" is spot-on, no matter how hyperbolically it's worded. Then again, it's bloody easy to trash MS and anything not Apple because Apple usually makes it so easy. As does the "competition."
I don't know if it's been linked to yet, but the WSJ is saying that Google will directly sell a Google branded phone, made by HTC, unlocked and without a contract. The Nexus One.
Which means, just off the top of my head:
--Either Google will have to lose money on each handset or sell it for quite a bit more than people are used to paying. Yes, I know subsidization is a false economy, but the average consumer is unlikely to see it that way, especially if they still have to pay the same amount on their monthly bill. The upside of not being under contract isn't a huge selling point, IMO, for most folk.
-- Google will now have its Zune moment, where it is suddenly in competition with its hardware partners. If the Nexus One is a huge success, that's a pretty big problem, if it's not, it's just status quo, so I'm not sure what the upside for Google is. Maybe they just want to get a reference platform out there, but it's a pretty risky way of doing it.
-- And, If Google really wants the Nexus One to be a huge success, they need to make it better than the competition, which includes those very hardware partners. Since they wrote the OS, any improvements they make will be regarded as improvements to the OS that they are withholding from those partners. If they don't withhold such improvements, then the Nexus One won't really have any way of distinguishing itself from other Android handsets. To the extent that improvements are a matter of integration with the HTC hardware, HTC has motivation to copy any such integration, again negating any competitive advantage. I don't see a good way out of this bind.
When MS decided to dump "Plays for Sure" and make the Zune, they made something new that none of their partners had. Google can't do that. Not sure how this plays out.
If like my Motorola Ming there is nothing on it preventing me from tethering on Att or T-Mobile and is the same hardware as the "Bravo" or "Passion" I'm sold. A $550 for that kind of phone would work for me.
Problem is, all the unlocked google phones do not work in the states. Sure you can buy a mytouch w/o a contract, but T-Mobile still requires a data plan for it, why I don't know.
If like my Motorola Ming there is nothing on it preventing me from tethering on Att or T-Mobile and is the same hardware as the "Bravo" or "Passion" I'm sold. A $550 for that kind of phone would work for me.
Problem is, all the unlocked google phones do not work in the states. Sure you can buy a mytouch w/o a contract, but T-Mobile still requires a data plan for it, why I don't know.
I sort of doubt that, say, Verizon is going to let you run your Nexus One on their network without getting a data plan out of you. Or allow tethering without additional fees.
Dude innovation does happen by theft and with ingenuity. Just ask Steve Jobs who stole from XEROX.
FAIL
The Mac was already well under development.
Apple paid Xerox to visit PARC, mainly to get Steve on board. Funny definition of stealing if you pay for something.
You might want to get your fact straight before posting in the future.
Quote:
What completely new product has Apple invented? Zero. They just improve on products that already exist in one form or another.
You might also want to brush up on your logic and critical thinking. Xerox had potential products, but they failed to have the ability to turn them into something commercially viable. Having an idea is not innovation. Making something of it is. Until you grasp that simple nuance, you will continue to be frustrated in your lack of understanding of Apple's continued success.
The iPhone. Apple invented this particular implementation of a mobile device.
The first home computer with a GUI.
Firewire.
The mouse, as we know it today, or of the 90's at least. The universal design of a "rubber-coated ball-bearing, orthogonal pinch rollers, and optical disk encoders" was developed by Apple for the Lisa and Macintosh project. It bears little resemblance to Englebart's mouse or the Xerox mouse.
There are probably more . . .
Tricky thing, this word "invent":
invent |inˈvent|
verb [ trans. ]
create or design (something that has not existed before); be the originator of : he invented an improved form of the steam engine.
• make up (an idea, name, story, etc.), esp. so as to deceive : I did not have to invent any tales about my past.
ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense [find out, discover] ): from Latin invent- ‘contrived, discovered,’ from the verb invenire, from in- ‘into’ + venire ‘come.’
I do wish that Apple's hardware was more competitive.
Apple's hardware is competitive for the segments they compete in. Sometime even (Gasp!) coming out less expensive then comparable hardware from PC manufacturers.
Quote:
I can also see why Apple doesn't want to destroy their profit margins like the rest of the PC industry by competing solely on spec/price value. When you compete on perceived value and on perfecting the little things that make the experience unmatchable, you don't need to be on the same level as your competitor.
You don't want them to be competitive, you want them to play in the low margin high volume bargain segments. That's not an are they wish to compete in, for the very reasons you outline!
With the negatives you outlined, other then selfishness why do you wish for them to be in such an undesirable position?
Like the furor over netbooks - it makes me ill listening to the "digerati" gush about them. And then start to rattle off all the upgrades they do to them. By the time they are done, they could have paid the same for a "real" laptop that would have much better performance. But that initial price was low!
It's a suckers game and Apple is too smart for that, even if other manufacturers and even consumers aren't that smart. Netbooks are a fad. They are a good second computer, but there are people out there who can barely get by with one computer. The market for two computer per users is pretty small - and the iPhone and whatever it's successor this summer is going to start eating into that demographic pretty hard - and it will do it with a higher margin then netbooks. Not going out on much of a limb for that, either...
it is amusing that people seem to think because everyone and their brother is announcing Android phones that sheer numbers will overwhelm the iPhone. Didn't work for Windows Mobile or Blackberry who had many years head start.
Isn't there some sort of internet penalty for using logic on a forum?
Excellent point and well made. And still flying over the heads of the usual suspects in these forums \
I sort of doubt that, say, Verizon is going to let you run your Nexus One on their network without getting a data plan out of you. Or allow tethering without additional fees.
It's all controlled via firmware on the phone. My Ming (unlocked and non carrier firmware phone) on the old MediaNet plan allowed tethering at $15 a month. It still does if I want it to. It is against the TOS, but if you don't go overboard with it, they won't know.
On iphone's though, they got around that issue by profiles and itunes. Its so lame that by default tethering on them is disabled, even on unlocked iphones by firmware 3.1.
It used to me even on Att that you could buy a WinMob phone and needed a data plan only for a month and could cancel it. Now, on the new HTC winmob 6.5 phone, you have to have a data plan, period, on the new phone, or they cancel your service. My friend got around that somehow via a hack or generic firmware or something.
It's nice having data access no matter where you go, but I don't need it, and wifi suffices most of the time. I just want a nice device w/o the stupid data plan.
It's all controlled via firmware on the phone. My Ming (unlocked and non carrier firmware phone) on the old MediaNet plan allowed tethering at $15 a month. It still does if I want it to. It is against the TOS, but if you don't go overboard with it, they won't know.
On iphone's though, they got around that issue by profiles and itunes. Its so lame that by default tethering on them is disabled, even on unlocked iphones by firmware 3.1.
It used to me even on Att that you could buy a WinMob phone and needed a data plan only for a month and could cancel it. Now, on the new HTC winmob 6.5 phone, you have to have a data plan, period, on the new phone, or they cancel your service. My friend got around that somehow via a hack or generic firmware or something.
It's nice having data access no matter where you go, but I don't need it, and wifi suffices most of the time. I just want a nice device w/o the stupid data plan.
The trouble with a Nexus One, though, is that is will be an extremely high profile phone. Verizon or T-Mobile aren't going to be very happy with their "partner" selling phones that circumvent their data usage policies, and are likely to be keeping a very close eye on customers using such phones.
One of the worst things that could happen to any carrier is to get a whole bunch of unlocked phones on their network that invite intense data usage but don't pay for it. Which is why it's never going to happen.
Which is why, again, I don't see a huge upside to this model, or the whole geek fetish for unlocked phones (at least in America). All it gets you is the ability to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile and back whenever you want. You still pay the same monthly rates, and you don't get the subsidy. What is the advantage?
The trouble with a Nexus One, though, is that is will be an extremely high profile phone. Verizon or T-Mobile aren't going to be very happy with their "partner" selling phones that circumvent their data usage policies, and are likely to be keeping a very close eye on customers using such phones.
One of the worst things that could happen to any carrier is to get a whole bunch of unlocked phones on their network that invite intense data usage but don't pay for it. Which is why it's never going to happen.
Which is why, again, I don't see a huge upside to this model, or the whole geek fetish for unlocked phones (at least in America). All it gets you is the ability to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile and back whenever you want. You still pay the same monthly rates, and you don't get the subsidy. What is the advantage?
Back when I got my Ming:
1. It offered features that nobody had, and was the best Motorola phone for the money at the time. Nothing like it was in the US.
2. No stupid carrier branding or ringtones.
3. No stupid carrier pushing firmware updates to it to limit features. My previous phone lost the ability to properly bt its address books in bulk around a year after I got it. It allowed me to easily xfer my address book to another phone. Later on the feature disappeared. Hard reseting the phone didn't help.
4. They can't force a data plan on you, and the data plans that you can add are either cheaper than the usual $30 plans they throw at you for subsidized phones.
Just because it is unlocked and allows tethering doesn't mean much if you don't hit the data limit. On say T-Mobile which it is 10GB (and they only throttle you, not limit you). They still get the $30, and for twice the amount it costs from the old $15 Att media net plan, THEY BETTER allow a higher amount of data.
Don't do stupid stuff like P2P/bittorrent, run a server or try to use it 24/7 and stream continuously.
Here is also perhaps why I got away with tethering with an unlocked device: so few people do it or can do it so it doesn't cause an outright ban. It's only when everyone does it will it cause issues.
I've used 6GB of data on my home cable connection. That's 3 computers + VoIP. People who do that on a phone without tethering are crazy.
Oh, and you can really just easily switch from one SIM GSM provider to another. Getting an unlocked phone with CDMA makes much less sense, unless it is a super rare CDMA+GSM+WCDMA+HSDPA.
Comments
You can't even say it's a unique business model. It's how Microsoft became the standard for the world in the PC arena.
Microsoft became what they are by bullying vendors into charging for DOS and then Windows on every PC they sold whether the user wanted it or not. For that they were tried and convicted as a monopoly - and yet it's the engine that still powers them to this day.
Google gets no such default revenue from phone manufacturers for Android. It will be interesting to see if they continue to fund it from their web based ad revenue and for how long. At least it doesn't have a beta tag...
Great. One troll gone, and another moves in to take his place. Do you post inflammatory remarks like this simply to derail the discussion?
lol. The guy should go work for macdailynews.com
But ya, the guy is extremely disturbing.
Which means, just off the top of my head:
--Either Google will have to lose money on each handset or sell it for quite a bit more than people are used to paying. Yes, I know subsidization is a false economy, but the average consumer is unlikely to see it that way, especially if they still have to pay the same amount on their monthly bill. The upside of not being under contract isn't a huge selling point, IMO, for most folk.
-- Google will now have its Zune moment, where it is suddenly in competition with its hardware partners. If the Nexus One is a huge success, that's a pretty big problem, if it's not, it's just status quo, so I'm not sure what the upside for Google is. Maybe they just want to get a reference platform out there, but it's a pretty risky way of doing it.
-- And, If Google really wants the Nexus One to be a huge success, they need to make it better than the competition, which includes those very hardware partners. Since they wrote the OS, any improvements they make will be regarded as improvements to the OS that they are withholding from those partners. If they don't withhold such improvements, then the Nexus One won't really have any way of distinguishing itself from other Android handsets. To the extent that improvements are a matter of integration with the HTC hardware, HTC has motivation to copy any such integration, again negating any competitive advantage. I don't see a good way out of this bind.
When MS decided to dump "Plays for Sure" and make the Zune, they made something new that none of their partners had. Google can't do that. Not sure how this plays out.
They should have got Motorola to design it for them. Motorola can pull off some neat designs.
I'm not saying its unfair, and I can definitely see where Apple comes from with this, but it's just a con for me.
Then I guess you will miss the party...
Ugly phone.
They should have got Motorola to design it for them. Motorola can pull off some neat designs.
If that's actually a shot of the final design of the real phone, the slight taper and silver bottom give it a 70's "modern" look, to me. Like a prop from Space: 1999. But who knows, maybe retro futuristic is the new brown.
lol. The guy should go work for macdailynews.com
But ya, the guy is extremely disturbing.
The funny thing is, is that nine times out of ten the "MDN take" is spot-on, no matter how hyperbolically it's worded. Then again, it's bloody easy to trash MS and anything not Apple because Apple usually makes it so easy. As does the "competition."
I don't know if it's been linked to yet, but the WSJ is saying that Google will directly sell a Google branded phone, made by HTC, unlocked and without a contract. The Nexus One.
Which means, just off the top of my head:
--Either Google will have to lose money on each handset or sell it for quite a bit more than people are used to paying. Yes, I know subsidization is a false economy, but the average consumer is unlikely to see it that way, especially if they still have to pay the same amount on their monthly bill. The upside of not being under contract isn't a huge selling point, IMO, for most folk.
-- Google will now have its Zune moment, where it is suddenly in competition with its hardware partners. If the Nexus One is a huge success, that's a pretty big problem, if it's not, it's just status quo, so I'm not sure what the upside for Google is. Maybe they just want to get a reference platform out there, but it's a pretty risky way of doing it.
-- And, If Google really wants the Nexus One to be a huge success, they need to make it better than the competition, which includes those very hardware partners. Since they wrote the OS, any improvements they make will be regarded as improvements to the OS that they are withholding from those partners. If they don't withhold such improvements, then the Nexus One won't really have any way of distinguishing itself from other Android handsets. To the extent that improvements are a matter of integration with the HTC hardware, HTC has motivation to copy any such integration, again negating any competitive advantage. I don't see a good way out of this bind.
When MS decided to dump "Plays for Sure" and make the Zune, they made something new that none of their partners had. Google can't do that. Not sure how this plays out.
If like my Motorola Ming there is nothing on it preventing me from tethering on Att or T-Mobile and is the same hardware as the "Bravo" or "Passion" I'm sold. A $550 for that kind of phone would work for me.
Problem is, all the unlocked google phones do not work in the states. Sure you can buy a mytouch w/o a contract, but T-Mobile still requires a data plan for it, why I don't know.
If like my Motorola Ming there is nothing on it preventing me from tethering on Att or T-Mobile and is the same hardware as the "Bravo" or "Passion" I'm sold. A $550 for that kind of phone would work for me.
Problem is, all the unlocked google phones do not work in the states. Sure you can buy a mytouch w/o a contract, but T-Mobile still requires a data plan for it, why I don't know.
I sort of doubt that, say, Verizon is going to let you run your Nexus One on their network without getting a data plan out of you. Or allow tethering without additional fees.
wow when you try to convey a piece of technology to a religion is when you know your a hardcore fanboy at the core.
Except that such a thing was never done. Unless you're speaking in general terms.
Dude innovation does happen by theft and with ingenuity. Just ask Steve Jobs who stole from XEROX.
FAIL
The Mac was already well under development.
Apple paid Xerox to visit PARC, mainly to get Steve on board. Funny definition of stealing if you pay for something.
You might want to get your fact straight before posting in the future.
What completely new product has Apple invented? Zero. They just improve on products that already exist in one form or another.
You might also want to brush up on your logic and critical thinking. Xerox had potential products, but they failed to have the ability to turn them into something commercially viable. Having an idea is not innovation. Making something of it is. Until you grasp that simple nuance, you will continue to be frustrated in your lack of understanding of Apple's continued success.
What completely new product has Apple invented
The iPhone. Apple invented this particular implementation of a mobile device.
The first home computer with a GUI.
Firewire.
The mouse, as we know it today, or of the 90's at least. The universal design of a "rubber-coated ball-bearing, orthogonal pinch rollers, and optical disk encoders" was developed by Apple for the Lisa and Macintosh project. It bears little resemblance to Englebart's mouse or the Xerox mouse.
There are probably more . . .
Tricky thing, this word "invent":
invent |inˈvent|
verb [ trans. ]
create or design (something that has not existed before); be the originator of : he invented an improved form of the steam engine.
• make up (an idea, name, story, etc.), esp. so as to deceive : I did not have to invent any tales about my past.
ORIGIN late 15th cent. (in the sense [find out, discover] ): from Latin invent- ‘contrived, discovered,’ from the verb invenire, from in- ‘into’ + venire ‘come.’
I do wish that Apple's hardware was more competitive.
Apple's hardware is competitive for the segments they compete in. Sometime even (Gasp!) coming out less expensive then comparable hardware from PC manufacturers.
I can also see why Apple doesn't want to destroy their profit margins like the rest of the PC industry by competing solely on spec/price value. When you compete on perceived value and on perfecting the little things that make the experience unmatchable, you don't need to be on the same level as your competitor.
You don't want them to be competitive, you want them to play in the low margin high volume bargain segments. That's not an are they wish to compete in, for the very reasons you outline!
With the negatives you outlined, other then selfishness why do you wish for them to be in such an undesirable position?
Like the furor over netbooks - it makes me ill listening to the "digerati" gush about them. And then start to rattle off all the upgrades they do to them. By the time they are done, they could have paid the same for a "real" laptop that would have much better performance. But that initial price was low!
It's a suckers game and Apple is too smart for that, even if other manufacturers and even consumers aren't that smart. Netbooks are a fad. They are a good second computer, but there are people out there who can barely get by with one computer. The market for two computer per users is pretty small - and the iPhone and whatever it's successor this summer is going to start eating into that demographic pretty hard - and it will do it with a higher margin then netbooks. Not going out on much of a limb for that, either...
it is amusing that people seem to think because everyone and their brother is announcing Android phones that sheer numbers will overwhelm the iPhone. Didn't work for Windows Mobile or Blackberry who had many years head start.
Isn't there some sort of internet penalty for using logic on a forum?
Excellent point and well made. And still flying over the heads of the usual suspects in these forums
I sort of doubt that, say, Verizon is going to let you run your Nexus One on their network without getting a data plan out of you. Or allow tethering without additional fees.
It's all controlled via firmware on the phone. My Ming (unlocked and non carrier firmware phone) on the old MediaNet plan allowed tethering at $15 a month. It still does if I want it to. It is against the TOS, but if you don't go overboard with it, they won't know.
On iphone's though, they got around that issue by profiles and itunes. Its so lame that by default tethering on them is disabled, even on unlocked iphones by firmware 3.1.
It used to me even on Att that you could buy a WinMob phone and needed a data plan only for a month and could cancel it. Now, on the new HTC winmob 6.5 phone, you have to have a data plan, period, on the new phone, or they cancel your service. My friend got around that somehow via a hack or generic firmware or something.
It's nice having data access no matter where you go, but I don't need it, and wifi suffices most of the time. I just want a nice device w/o the stupid data plan.
It's all controlled via firmware on the phone. My Ming (unlocked and non carrier firmware phone) on the old MediaNet plan allowed tethering at $15 a month. It still does if I want it to. It is against the TOS, but if you don't go overboard with it, they won't know.
On iphone's though, they got around that issue by profiles and itunes. Its so lame that by default tethering on them is disabled, even on unlocked iphones by firmware 3.1.
It used to me even on Att that you could buy a WinMob phone and needed a data plan only for a month and could cancel it. Now, on the new HTC winmob 6.5 phone, you have to have a data plan, period, on the new phone, or they cancel your service. My friend got around that somehow via a hack or generic firmware or something.
It's nice having data access no matter where you go, but I don't need it, and wifi suffices most of the time. I just want a nice device w/o the stupid data plan.
The trouble with a Nexus One, though, is that is will be an extremely high profile phone. Verizon or T-Mobile aren't going to be very happy with their "partner" selling phones that circumvent their data usage policies, and are likely to be keeping a very close eye on customers using such phones.
One of the worst things that could happen to any carrier is to get a whole bunch of unlocked phones on their network that invite intense data usage but don't pay for it. Which is why it's never going to happen.
Which is why, again, I don't see a huge upside to this model, or the whole geek fetish for unlocked phones (at least in America). All it gets you is the ability to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile and back whenever you want. You still pay the same monthly rates, and you don't get the subsidy. What is the advantage?
The trouble with a Nexus One, though, is that is will be an extremely high profile phone. Verizon or T-Mobile aren't going to be very happy with their "partner" selling phones that circumvent their data usage policies, and are likely to be keeping a very close eye on customers using such phones.
One of the worst things that could happen to any carrier is to get a whole bunch of unlocked phones on their network that invite intense data usage but don't pay for it. Which is why it's never going to happen.
Which is why, again, I don't see a huge upside to this model, or the whole geek fetish for unlocked phones (at least in America). All it gets you is the ability to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile and back whenever you want. You still pay the same monthly rates, and you don't get the subsidy. What is the advantage?
Back when I got my Ming:
1. It offered features that nobody had, and was the best Motorola phone for the money at the time. Nothing like it was in the US.
2. No stupid carrier branding or ringtones.
3. No stupid carrier pushing firmware updates to it to limit features. My previous phone lost the ability to properly bt its address books in bulk around a year after I got it. It allowed me to easily xfer my address book to another phone. Later on the feature disappeared. Hard reseting the phone didn't help.
4. They can't force a data plan on you, and the data plans that you can add are either cheaper than the usual $30 plans they throw at you for subsidized phones.
Just because it is unlocked and allows tethering doesn't mean much if you don't hit the data limit. On say T-Mobile which it is 10GB (and they only throttle you, not limit you). They still get the $30, and for twice the amount it costs from the old $15 Att media net plan, THEY BETTER allow a higher amount of data.
Don't do stupid stuff like P2P/bittorrent, run a server or try to use it 24/7 and stream continuously.
Here is also perhaps why I got away with tethering with an unlocked device: so few people do it or can do it so it doesn't cause an outright ban. It's only when everyone does it will it cause issues.
I've used 6GB of data on my home cable connection. That's 3 computers + VoIP. People who do that on a phone without tethering are crazy.
Oh, and you can really just easily switch from one SIM GSM provider to another. Getting an unlocked phone with CDMA makes much less sense, unless it is a super rare CDMA+GSM+WCDMA+HSDPA.