I don't think Cingular (who they bargained with, not the new AT&T) felt it needed Apple's iPhone to survive (come on, its a PHONE, not the greatest device ever produced by man!).
But beyond that, you're not looking at the whole deal. All you're looking at is "5 years exclusive" and calling it a bad deal. Look what apple got in return. They get a cut of the action (phone makers don't get that, normally). They get to control the phone, the UI, customer service, advertising, etc. Again, not something the cell companies normally give up. This is what Verizon balked at (most likely the sharing of the fees and the non-crippling of the phone). In my opinion, AT&T gave up a lot, and, in return, got a lot. That's part of a deal.
And how would you like to be AT&T and, after two years of working to promote and push the iPhone to the point where its about to explode (sorry, but I don't see an early explosion, not at $600 a pop), and then Apple says "Thanks for all the hard work, we're going to now sell it through Verizon and Sprint as well." It'd be like Intel giving Apple all that help to get OS X running well and optimized for x86, and then Apple going "Thanks. We're now going to use AMD chips!". If you do crap like that to your supposed partners, how many people are going to want to partner with you the next time?
But what I want to know what they'll do when there's a problem with the iPhone. Do we have to send it in and get it fixed? Will they replace it (doubt it). With my verizon phone, if something goes wrong with it within the first year (without regard as to cause or problem), I can take it in and get it replaced, no questions asked.
IIRC, one of the things apple wanted was control and say over the hardware (which will be great, because then Apple can say its AT&T's problem, and AT&T can say its Apple's problem, and it'll never get addressed!). Will Apple be replacing the hardware (along with syncing over all your data to the new one)? Will they want to repair it? What if you take it into the local AT&T store (since you don't have a convenient Apple store nearby, since you don't live in one of the 6 cities Apple decided to stick 500 stores in). Will they replace it, or have to send it in?
How many of you are willing to be without your phone/handheld computer for 3-5 business days? This isn't an iPod, here. People use their phone for critical daily functions. You can't just take it away for a week and say "But, you have an iPhone (when it works), stop complaining!" (Oh, wait, I forgot. Apple does that all the time with people's computers.)
I also want to know how solid this thing is going to be. My phone ends up hitting concrete A LOT. Is the iPhone's screen just going to crack the first time it hits the carpet? Will the screen actually be scratch resistant (as opposed, say, to ipod screens)? Keep in mind that, with everything on the screen, you can't get a case to cover the screen or the like, because then you can't use it!
These are the questions that need to be answered. Not "OMG, is it CDMA????" or "Will it have pay-as-you-go!".
I have Verizon and the signal strength is fantastic everywhere in Southern California as opposed to Cingular which is really not so good here. A lot of my friends have Cingular and their calls to me sound bad and drop frequently. So I'll get an iPhone to play around with but I won't switch exclusively to Cingular.
The interesting thing about these cell companies is the divergence between their network performance, and their handling of their customers.
According to Consumer Reports, year after year, Verison has the best performance ratings across the country.
But, many of my friends who use the service are upset with Verison for all of the other reasons that people here have mentioned. Several have left the service for those reasons, DESPITE it's better network quality.
The past few months, ATT has been picking up more new customers than Verison, and when questioned, more people said they would like to leave Verison then the people questioned at ATT.
I don't think Cingular (who they bargained with, not the new AT&T) felt it needed Apple's iPhone to survive (come on, its a PHONE, not the greatest device ever produced by man!).
I'd agree, especially since I never said that ATT/Cingular needed the iPhone to "survive". That's your interpretation, not mine. I said they needed the iPhone to remain #1 (and possibly save Sigman's job). And yeah, they very likely do.
Also, it does not matter who they were in the past, they're definitely ATT now. But I still refer to them as ATT/Cingular sometimes, to avoid confusion.
Quote:
But beyond that, you're not looking at the whole deal. All you're looking at is "5 years exclusive" and calling it a bad deal. Look what apple got in return. They get a cut of the action (phone makers don't get that, normally). They get to control the phone, the UI, customer service, advertising, etc. Again, not something the cell companies normally give up. This is what Verizon balked at (most likely the sharing of the fees and the non-crippling of the phone). In my opinion, AT&T gave up a lot, and, in return, got a lot. That's part of a deal.
ATT gave up a lot, but even if the deal isn't a true five-year ironclad exclusive for anything and everything Apple puts out, they're still getting a tremendous amount in return:
1- The cost of attracting new customers for a wireless carrier is enormous, and amounts to something like several hundred dollars PER CUSTOMER. If Apple helps ATT/Cing attract a few million more new customers over the term of their contract, that helps out ATT's bottom line by quite a lot- on the order of billions of dollars, actually.
2- The iPhone is a flagship product, which helps out ATT's image immensely. This is something ATT definitely needs, as their image is not a great one in wireless- they routinely lose out in both JD Power and Consumer Reports surveys, finishing anywhere from mid-pack to last in most regions. Their customer service is also widely regarded as poor. But to have the best, most exciting phone in years, perhaps decades, is a game-changer, image-wise. Some potential customers (not me, but some) will look at them differently now.
3- It gets butts in the door. Even folks who are not seriously considering buying the iPhone will still visit ATT stores to see it, where they can be sold on other ATT phones (and services) that are more in their price range. The cell phone sharks know their biz as well as used car salesmen, and if you give them enough foot traffic, they know how to turn it into gold.
4- The iPhone is a natural for driving ATT's data plan revenues, and getting as many customers as popular to sign up for data in addition to voice is something that all the major carriers desperately wish to do.
Given the above, I say again- if the deal is a five-year bulletproof exclusive on any handset Apple can produce, Apple did not get the better end of the deal, ATT did. Because frankly, they need Apple more than Apple needs them. But we will very likely not know the true scope of the deal for years to come.
The past few months, ATT has been picking up more new customers than Verizon,
If you're referring to Q4 2006, that was a bit of an aberration. It was the first quarter ATT/Cingular won over Verizon since late '04, and they lost the quarter right after it, and by a lot more than they had won Q4 '06... ATT/Cing won Q4 '06 by something like 50-100k net customer adds, and they lost Q1 '07 by 500k net customer adds.... not a good exchange.
In fact, Verizon has won 8 of the last 9 quarters over ATT/Cingular (though one was very close, so some see it as Verizon going 7-1-1, if you like football analogies). This is why many in the industry predict Verizon's overtaking of ATT/Cing for the #1 position in the US as inevitable, unless the iPhone is truly a game-changer. \
However, its possible that you're referring to 'gross customer adds', which is actually a stat that ATT/Cingular does very well in. But net customer adds is the much more important stat, because that's the actual number of customers your customer base grew by.
ATT/Cingular does add more customers on a gross basis than Verizon does, but due to ATT/Cingular's much higher customer churn rate (churn = the rate at which customers leave a carrier), ATT/Cing consistently loses to Verizon in NET customer adds, which is the stat that really matters.
To explain this, take a look at the latest quarter results (for Q1 '07):
ATT/Cing had 1.2 million net customer adds, with an overall churn rate of 1.7%. What churn rate means is, the percentage of customers a carrier loses each month.
Running the numbers, this means that ATT/Cing got something like 4.3 million customers to sign up for ATT/Cing service in the quarter... which is great. But due to churn, they lost nearly as many customers as they gained, namely 3.1 million. Thus leaving them with 1.2 million customers gained overall, which is their NET customers adds for the quarter. They ended the quarter with 1.2 million more customers than they had at the beginning of the quarter.
Compare this to Verizon, which had 1.7 million net customer adds in the quarter, with a 1.08 percent overall churn rate.
This means that Verizon actually gross-added fewer customers than ATT/Cing... only 3.6 million or so. But they lost a lotfewer customers than ATT/Cing due to their better churn rate... only about 1.9 million customers. Thus, they ended up net-adding a lot more customers than ATT/Cing, namely 1.7 million.
And thats the number that matters... it does no good to gross-add more than the other guy, if you're going to lose a lot more customers than the other guy and end up getting fewer customers in the end. In fact, its more expensive to run the business that way, because it costs a lot of money to get people to sign up in droves, in terms of marketing, distribution, and deals on phones to entice the customer.
Hope that was illuminating, in terms of ATT/Cing's true market performance.
AT&T/Cingular is not great, but VZW's continued insistence on crippling all the phones it sells just sends a big FU message to its customers. ...
Only to those geeky customers who read Motorola's press releases and blindly assume that Verizon will be selling the same products.
The rest of us, who know nothing about the phones other than what's advertised by the carriers, can see clear as day that a Verizon RAZR isn't the same as a Cingular RAZR. We compare features and make our choice based on what looks best.
We don't read the Motorola spec (listing every feature made, including those that aren't shipped to all carriers), then buy the phone from a carrier without double-checking that spec sheet, and then scream "fraud" when they two spec sheets don't match.
You may not like the feature set that Verizon bundles in their phones (I'd also prefer more), but it's not like anybody lied to you about the capabilities. If VZ's store doesn't list a feature, and store reps explicitly tell you that the feature doesn't exist, why would you assume otherwise?
As for why they do this, why not? When push comes to shove, most phone buyers are more interested in network coverage and pricing than they are in the feature-set of the handsets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TBaggins
If the USA Today report is true (and I still have my doubts), Apple was foolish to give ATT/Cingular that long of an exclusive. To be limited in the US for five years to a single carrier that has less than 30% of the market is silly. It's a bit like selling Macs only to folks whose last names end in S through Z.
Depends on how many phones they sell. If AT&T sells enough iPhones to max-out Apple's production capability for five years, then I don't see a problem for Apple.
It wouldn't surprise me if there are "outs" in the contract that will allow Apple to break exclusivity if some sales figure is not met. Apple's not dumb enough to sign a suicide pact.
So which 2G network does Japan have? I doubt that they didn't use cell phones until 3G came out.
PHS (Asian only standard) for NTT DoCoMo and weird frequency CDMA on KDDI. However they have 100% 3G coverage on all 3 networks so their older stuff is going dark.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sennen
hmmm, will this be compatible with Japan's 3G networks? going by Electric Monk's post, maybe...? Electric Monk?
Ahhh. Not so much:
UMTS bands & operators (UMTS includes WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, FOMA (which is now standard UMTS, it didn't used to be and all four are backwards/forward compatible with software upgrades and sometimes hardware upgrades and if you have the right frequencies and roaming agreements global roaming is possible regardless of which type of UMTS is in use)
North America (lots of GSM/EDGE as well)
Cingular 850/1900
T-Mobile 2100 (note, different from world 2100)/1700
Rogers 850/1900
Europe (lots of GSM/EDGE as well)
2100 all
Expansion possible to 900/1800 as GSM networks go dark.
Asia (excluding China who uses own 3G standards) (Very little GSM)
2100 all
Expansion possible to 900/1800 as GSM networks go dark.
Japan (no GSM)
2100 for Softbank Mobile and NTT DoCoMo, 850 on NTT DoCoMo FOMA Plus.
Australia (Some GSM/EDGE)
850/1900/2100 (idiots). Although 850 Mhz may overlap all other coverage.
The 1700 MHz UMTS in Japan isn't really used.
Therefore for transparent global roaming you'd need 2100 MHz and 850 MHz. 1900 Mhz would be nice as well for North America. We'll just forgot about T-Mobile.
iPhone Europe - hopefully adds 2100 MHz UMTS
iPhone Asia - 2100 MHz UMTS will be required if they expect it to sell in Japan. 850 MHz would be nice for Australia and FOMA Plus (if NTT DoCoMo gets the iPhone).
iPhone North America (Revision - Needs 850/1900 MHz UMTS. If they can squeeze 2100 MHz in, this model can become the standard iPhone model, otherwise there will be at least 2, and possibly 3 models.
I discount UMTS expansion for now because that's a whole 'nother can of worms?
Asia, like most of the world, is predominently GSM
Like another user posted, CDMA is Japan, Korea and all around Asia. I'm in Japan and it's all CDMA. There are 88 MILLION cell phone users here on this small island.
Like another user posted, CDMA is Japan, Korea and all around Asia. I'm in Japan and it's all CDMA. There are 88 MILLION cell phone users here on this small island.
Well. Actually it's PHS/CDMA (both heading towards phase out) and UMTS (Softbank/NTT DoCoMo, South Korea) and CDMA2000 (Au/KDDI) but whatever.
The thing is that both Japan and South Korea have around 100% coverage on the 2100 MHz UMTS 3G band (the same one used in Europe).
Therefore it makes little sense to make a CDMA iPhone when simply adding 2100 MHz UMTS makes it work in Japan/South Korea and adds 3G support in Europe.
Well. Actually it's PHS/CDMA (both heading towards phase out) and UMTS (Softbank/NTT DoCoMo, South Korea) and CDMA2000 (Au/KDDI) but whatever.
The thing is that both Japan and South Korea have around 100% coverage on the 2100 MHz UMTS 3G band (the same one used in Europe).
Therefore it makes little sense to make a CDMA iPhone when simply adding 2100 MHz UMTS makes it work in Japan/South Korea and adds 3G support in Europe.
The only problem is ignoring the large majority of the US market, never a safe thing to do, esp. when it is your home market.
The only problem is ignoring the large majority of the US market, never a safe thing to do, esp. when it is your home market.
Bingo. In the US, CDMA is actually more popular than GSM, and the gap is likely to widen, as Sprint migrates its Nextel customers (currently on iDEN) over to CDMA.
hello everybody, i'm italian and i think that in europe this phone will not find a huge success for many reasons:
it's not a 3g phone and people who buy a phone nowdays in france, italy, spain and germany do want it to be 3g; it's not dvb-h capable; in europe itunes still doesn't sell tv shows nor movies to view on the phone; public wifi networks are very rare.
hello everybody, i'm italian and i think that in europe this phone will not find a huge success for many reasons:
it's not a 3g phone and people who buy a phone nowdays in france, italy, spain and germany do want it to be 3g; it's not dvb-h capable; in europe itunes still doesn't sell tv shows nor movies to view on the phone; public wifi networks are very rare.
You assume, of course, that there will never be a version 1.1 of this phone.
Don't assume that the feature list will never change from the first introductory model, which hasn't shipped anywhere yet.
Will the iPhone be software upgradable to UMTS or HSDPA, or is this a hardware issue?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mmmdoughnuts
My bet is yes. Remember the MBP wireless n fee. We know that the phone revenew will be spread out over the year. This is most likely because they are getting a % of the monthly fees from ATT, but it does open the possibility for those users in 3G cities to 'unlock' the high bandwidth services.
There is absolutely zero chance of a software update. GSM to UMTS is not some minor change you can do with a patch. You need an entirely different chip, antenna, power-control system, etc... It's like asking if there will be a software update to turn your shuffle into a video ipod - the answer is no.
Comments
I don't think Cingular (who they bargained with, not the new AT&T) felt it needed Apple's iPhone to survive (come on, its a PHONE, not the greatest device ever produced by man!).
But beyond that, you're not looking at the whole deal. All you're looking at is "5 years exclusive" and calling it a bad deal. Look what apple got in return. They get a cut of the action (phone makers don't get that, normally). They get to control the phone, the UI, customer service, advertising, etc. Again, not something the cell companies normally give up. This is what Verizon balked at (most likely the sharing of the fees and the non-crippling of the phone). In my opinion, AT&T gave up a lot, and, in return, got a lot. That's part of a deal.
And how would you like to be AT&T and, after two years of working to promote and push the iPhone to the point where its about to explode (sorry, but I don't see an early explosion, not at $600 a pop), and then Apple says "Thanks for all the hard work, we're going to now sell it through Verizon and Sprint as well." It'd be like Intel giving Apple all that help to get OS X running well and optimized for x86, and then Apple going "Thanks. We're now going to use AMD chips!". If you do crap like that to your supposed partners, how many people are going to want to partner with you the next time?
But what I want to know what they'll do when there's a problem with the iPhone. Do we have to send it in and get it fixed? Will they replace it (doubt it). With my verizon phone, if something goes wrong with it within the first year (without regard as to cause or problem), I can take it in and get it replaced, no questions asked.
IIRC, one of the things apple wanted was control and say over the hardware (which will be great, because then Apple can say its AT&T's problem, and AT&T can say its Apple's problem, and it'll never get addressed!). Will Apple be replacing the hardware (along with syncing over all your data to the new one)? Will they want to repair it? What if you take it into the local AT&T store (since you don't have a convenient Apple store nearby, since you don't live in one of the 6 cities Apple decided to stick 500 stores in). Will they replace it, or have to send it in?
How many of you are willing to be without your phone/handheld computer for 3-5 business days? This isn't an iPod, here. People use their phone for critical daily functions. You can't just take it away for a week and say "But, you have an iPhone (when it works), stop complaining!" (Oh, wait, I forgot. Apple does that all the time with people's computers.)
I also want to know how solid this thing is going to be. My phone ends up hitting concrete A LOT. Is the iPhone's screen just going to crack the first time it hits the carpet? Will the screen actually be scratch resistant (as opposed, say, to ipod screens)? Keep in mind that, with everything on the screen, you can't get a case to cover the screen or the like, because then you can't use it!
These are the questions that need to be answered. Not "OMG, is it CDMA????" or "Will it have pay-as-you-go!".
Very well stated!
I have Verizon and the signal strength is fantastic everywhere in Southern California as opposed to Cingular which is really not so good here. A lot of my friends have Cingular and their calls to me sound bad and drop frequently. So I'll get an iPhone to play around with but I won't switch exclusively to Cingular.
The interesting thing about these cell companies is the divergence between their network performance, and their handling of their customers.
According to Consumer Reports, year after year, Verison has the best performance ratings across the country.
But, many of my friends who use the service are upset with Verison for all of the other reasons that people here have mentioned. Several have left the service for those reasons, DESPITE it's better network quality.
The past few months, ATT has been picking up more new customers than Verison, and when questioned, more people said they would like to leave Verison then the people questioned at ATT.
Check out this older article here at AI:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles..._motorola.html
I don't think Cingular (who they bargained with, not the new AT&T) felt it needed Apple's iPhone to survive (come on, its a PHONE, not the greatest device ever produced by man!).
I'd agree, especially since I never said that ATT/Cingular needed the iPhone to "survive". That's your interpretation, not mine. I said they needed the iPhone to remain #1 (and possibly save Sigman's job). And yeah, they very likely do.
Also, it does not matter who they were in the past, they're definitely ATT now. But I still refer to them as ATT/Cingular sometimes, to avoid confusion.
But beyond that, you're not looking at the whole deal. All you're looking at is "5 years exclusive" and calling it a bad deal. Look what apple got in return. They get a cut of the action (phone makers don't get that, normally). They get to control the phone, the UI, customer service, advertising, etc. Again, not something the cell companies normally give up. This is what Verizon balked at (most likely the sharing of the fees and the non-crippling of the phone). In my opinion, AT&T gave up a lot, and, in return, got a lot. That's part of a deal.
ATT gave up a lot, but even if the deal isn't a true five-year ironclad exclusive for anything and everything Apple puts out, they're still getting a tremendous amount in return:
1- The cost of attracting new customers for a wireless carrier is enormous, and amounts to something like several hundred dollars PER CUSTOMER. If Apple helps ATT/Cing attract a few million more new customers over the term of their contract, that helps out ATT's bottom line by quite a lot- on the order of billions of dollars, actually.
2- The iPhone is a flagship product, which helps out ATT's image immensely. This is something ATT definitely needs, as their image is not a great one in wireless- they routinely lose out in both JD Power and Consumer Reports surveys, finishing anywhere from mid-pack to last in most regions. Their customer service is also widely regarded as poor. But to have the best, most exciting phone in years, perhaps decades, is a game-changer, image-wise. Some potential customers (not me, but some) will look at them differently now.
3- It gets butts in the door. Even folks who are not seriously considering buying the iPhone will still visit ATT stores to see it, where they can be sold on other ATT phones (and services) that are more in their price range. The cell phone sharks know their biz as well as used car salesmen, and if you give them enough foot traffic, they know how to turn it into gold.
4- The iPhone is a natural for driving ATT's data plan revenues, and getting as many customers as popular to sign up for data in addition to voice is something that all the major carriers desperately wish to do.
Given the above, I say again- if the deal is a five-year bulletproof exclusive on any handset Apple can produce, Apple did not get the better end of the deal, ATT did. Because frankly, they need Apple more than Apple needs them. But we will very likely not know the true scope of the deal for years to come.
.
The past few months, ATT has been picking up more new customers than Verizon,
If you're referring to Q4 2006, that was a bit of an aberration. It was the first quarter ATT/Cingular won over Verizon since late '04, and they lost the quarter right after it, and by a lot more than they had won Q4 '06... ATT/Cing won Q4 '06 by something like 50-100k net customer adds, and they lost Q1 '07 by 500k net customer adds.... not a good exchange.
In fact, Verizon has won 8 of the last 9 quarters over ATT/Cingular (though one was very close, so some see it as Verizon going 7-1-1, if you like football analogies). This is why many in the industry predict Verizon's overtaking of ATT/Cing for the #1 position in the US as inevitable, unless the iPhone is truly a game-changer.
However, its possible that you're referring to 'gross customer adds', which is actually a stat that ATT/Cingular does very well in. But net customer adds is the much more important stat, because that's the actual number of customers your customer base grew by.
ATT/Cingular does add more customers on a gross basis than Verizon does, but due to ATT/Cingular's much higher customer churn rate (churn = the rate at which customers leave a carrier), ATT/Cing consistently loses to Verizon in NET customer adds, which is the stat that really matters.
To explain this, take a look at the latest quarter results (for Q1 '07):
ATT/Cing had 1.2 million net customer adds, with an overall churn rate of 1.7%. What churn rate means is, the percentage of customers a carrier loses each month.
Running the numbers, this means that ATT/Cing got something like 4.3 million customers to sign up for ATT/Cing service in the quarter... which is great. But due to churn, they lost nearly as many customers as they gained, namely 3.1 million. Thus leaving them with 1.2 million customers gained overall, which is their NET customers adds for the quarter. They ended the quarter with 1.2 million more customers than they had at the beginning of the quarter.
Compare this to Verizon, which had 1.7 million net customer adds in the quarter, with a 1.08 percent overall churn rate.
This means that Verizon actually gross-added fewer customers than ATT/Cing... only 3.6 million or so. But they lost a lot fewer customers than ATT/Cing due to their better churn rate... only about 1.9 million customers. Thus, they ended up net-adding a lot more customers than ATT/Cing, namely 1.7 million.
And thats the number that matters... it does no good to gross-add more than the other guy, if you're going to lose a lot more customers than the other guy and end up getting fewer customers in the end. In fact, its more expensive to run the business that way, because it costs a lot of money to get people to sign up in droves, in terms of marketing, distribution, and deals on phones to entice the customer.
Hope that was illuminating, in terms of ATT/Cing's true market performance.
.
AT&T/Cingular is not great, but VZW's continued insistence on crippling all the phones it sells just sends a big FU message to its customers. ...
Only to those geeky customers who read Motorola's press releases and blindly assume that Verizon will be selling the same products.
The rest of us, who know nothing about the phones other than what's advertised by the carriers, can see clear as day that a Verizon RAZR isn't the same as a Cingular RAZR. We compare features and make our choice based on what looks best.
We don't read the Motorola spec (listing every feature made, including those that aren't shipped to all carriers), then buy the phone from a carrier without double-checking that spec sheet, and then scream "fraud" when they two spec sheets don't match.
You may not like the feature set that Verizon bundles in their phones (I'd also prefer more), but it's not like anybody lied to you about the capabilities. If VZ's store doesn't list a feature, and store reps explicitly tell you that the feature doesn't exist, why would you assume otherwise?
As for why they do this, why not? When push comes to shove, most phone buyers are more interested in network coverage and pricing than they are in the feature-set of the handsets.
If the USA Today report is true (and I still have my doubts), Apple was foolish to give ATT/Cingular that long of an exclusive. To be limited in the US for five years to a single carrier that has less than 30% of the market is silly. It's a bit like selling Macs only to folks whose last names end in S through Z.
Depends on how many phones they sell. If AT&T sells enough iPhones to max-out Apple's production capability for five years, then I don't see a problem for Apple.
It wouldn't surprise me if there are "outs" in the contract that will allow Apple to break exclusivity if some sales figure is not met. Apple's not dumb enough to sign a suicide pact.
So which 2G network does Japan have? I doubt that they didn't use cell phones until 3G came out.
PHS (Asian only standard) for NTT DoCoMo and weird frequency CDMA on KDDI. However they have 100% 3G coverage on all 3 networks so their older stuff is going dark.
hmmm, will this be compatible with Japan's 3G networks? going by Electric Monk's post, maybe...? Electric Monk?
Ahhh. Not so much:
UMTS bands & operators (UMTS includes WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, FOMA (which is now standard UMTS, it didn't used to be and all four are backwards/forward compatible with software upgrades and sometimes hardware upgrades and if you have the right frequencies and roaming agreements global roaming is possible regardless of which type of UMTS is in use)
North America (lots of GSM/EDGE as well)
Cingular 850/1900
T-Mobile 2100 (note, different from world 2100)/1700
Rogers 850/1900
Europe (lots of GSM/EDGE as well)
2100 all
Expansion possible to 900/1800 as GSM networks go dark.
Asia (excluding China who uses own 3G standards) (Very little GSM)
2100 all
Expansion possible to 900/1800 as GSM networks go dark.
Japan (no GSM)
2100 for Softbank Mobile and NTT DoCoMo, 850 on NTT DoCoMo FOMA Plus.
Australia (Some GSM/EDGE)
850/1900/2100 (idiots). Although 850 Mhz may overlap all other coverage.
The 1700 MHz UMTS in Japan isn't really used.
Therefore for transparent global roaming you'd need 2100 MHz and 850 MHz. 1900 Mhz would be nice as well for North America. We'll just forgot about T-Mobile.
iPhone Europe - hopefully adds 2100 MHz UMTS
iPhone Asia - 2100 MHz UMTS will be required if they expect it to sell in Japan. 850 MHz would be nice for Australia and FOMA Plus (if NTT DoCoMo gets the iPhone).
iPhone North America (Revision
I discount UMTS expansion for now because that's a whole 'nother can of worms?
xed
Asia, like most of the world, is predominently GSM
Like another user posted, CDMA is Japan, Korea and all around Asia. I'm in Japan and it's all CDMA. There are 88 MILLION cell phone users here on this small island.
many thanks for the valuable information
Like another user posted, CDMA is Japan, Korea and all around Asia. I'm in Japan and it's all CDMA. There are 88 MILLION cell phone users here on this small island.
Well. Actually it's PHS/CDMA (both heading towards phase out) and UMTS (Softbank/NTT DoCoMo, South Korea) and CDMA2000 (Au/KDDI) but whatever.
The thing is that both Japan and South Korea have around 100% coverage on the 2100 MHz UMTS 3G band (the same one used in Europe).
Therefore it makes little sense to make a CDMA iPhone when simply adding 2100 MHz UMTS makes it work in Japan/South Korea and adds 3G support in Europe.
Well. Actually it's PHS/CDMA (both heading towards phase out) and UMTS (Softbank/NTT DoCoMo, South Korea) and CDMA2000 (Au/KDDI) but whatever.
The thing is that both Japan and South Korea have around 100% coverage on the 2100 MHz UMTS 3G band (the same one used in Europe).
Therefore it makes little sense to make a CDMA iPhone when simply adding 2100 MHz UMTS makes it work in Japan/South Korea and adds 3G support in Europe.
The only problem is ignoring the large majority of the US market, never a safe thing to do, esp. when it is your home market.
The only problem is ignoring the large majority of the US market, never a safe thing to do, esp. when it is your home market.
Bingo. In the US, CDMA is actually more popular than GSM, and the gap is likely to widen, as Sprint migrates its Nextel customers (currently on iDEN) over to CDMA.
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it's not a 3g phone and people who buy a phone nowdays in france, italy, spain and germany do want it to be 3g; it's not dvb-h capable; in europe itunes still doesn't sell tv shows nor movies to view on the phone; public wifi networks are very rare.
hello everybody, i'm italian and i think that in europe this phone will not find a huge success for many reasons:
it's not a 3g phone and people who buy a phone nowdays in france, italy, spain and germany do want it to be 3g; it's not dvb-h capable; in europe itunes still doesn't sell tv shows nor movies to view on the phone; public wifi networks are very rare.
You assume, of course, that there will never be a version 1.1 of this phone.
Don't assume that the feature list will never change from the first introductory model, which hasn't shipped anywhere yet.
Will the iPhone be software upgradable to UMTS or HSDPA, or is this a hardware issue?
My bet is yes. Remember the MBP wireless n fee. We know that the phone revenew will be spread out over the year. This is most likely because they are getting a % of the monthly fees from ATT, but it does open the possibility for those users in 3G cities to 'unlock' the high bandwidth services.
There is absolutely zero chance of a software update. GSM to UMTS is not some minor change you can do with a patch. You need an entirely different chip, antenna, power-control system, etc... It's like asking if there will be a software update to turn your shuffle into a video ipod - the answer is no.
I am a worthless low-life spamming scum and I have been banned.
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