The steering of Android
So my landlady was contemplating moving off her MVNO based phone provider to Verizon and was asking me about
the iPhone. Her boyfriend has an iPhone and they wanted to Facetime and message each other.
Well she just walked in with a Verizon bag and a HTC Rezound. Evidently they made the Rezound sound like a world beater. Even
hyped up the Beats by Dre audio.
It's not a bad looking phone but going through the UI IMO is just a mess. I didn't want to say anything negative because it's light years
ahead of her former phone but sheesh Verizon hyping up a 6 month Android phone like it's a Galaxy SIII is a bit disturbing.
One thing I do like about the iPhone is that it pretty much earned its success rather than been carrier driven. I don't have hatred for Android
but by and large it "is" a carrier driven platform.
Comments
Assuming that's true, why do you think that is?
Most likely because there's financial gain in parity.
Most of the large carriers are pretty vocal about their disdain for phone subsidy and the iPhone commands amongst the largest of subsidy.
This puts more money in Apple's pocket than the carrier.
So what Verizon or AT&T will do is attempt to create parity amongst the brands they carry making sure not to let Android get too large. They are already
beginning to hype up the Lumia phones (not that they aren't deserving of hype) so that they have 3 major vendors they can play off of each other.
People wonder why Android tablets have faired poorly and likely it's because mostly Wifi models sell which means the carrier gets nothing. Thusly Android
tablets aren't being pushed and Apple walks away with that market like they would walk away with the phone market with the steering.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/03/technology/verizon-iphone-sales/ ;
Verizon knows they have a window of less than 6 months to hype LTE phones over the 3G iPhone. Probably less when you factor in that the iOS 6.0 announcement
will pretty much start the war chant for whatever 6th generation iPhone is coming.