I'd say that my worst AT&T coverage was in SF and Oakland areas. Sometimes it would literally fluctuate on the handset every few seconds. It's been about a year so I hope things have improved.
That's just odd... I live/work in San Francisco and work a lot in Richmond across the Bay. Reception for me is excellent in all the areas except for one dead spot in Richmod near San Pablo. Go figure.
That's just odd... I live/work in San Francisco and work a lot in Richmond across the Bay. Reception for me is excellent in all the areas except for one dead spot in Richmod near San Pablo. Go figure.
It's been a year, and that is a long time for AT&T to get things more covered. I was in Walnut Creek area around Christmas this past year and had EDGE with one to two bars, as did the AT&T Palm Treos, in a nice neighborhood. Makes no sense sometimes.
It's been a year, and that is a long time for AT&T to get things more covered. I was in Walnut Creek area around Christmas this past year and had EDGE with one to two bars, as did the AT&T Palm Treos, in a nice neighborhood. Makes no sense sometimes.
You must have went off you kool-aid meds if you're admitting you had a weak signal.
Seriously, ever wonder why both signals were on AT&T? Huh- ever?
That doesn't jive with what I've been reading on the telecom news sites. What I've been seeing is CDMA is widely used in China, and is actually increasing. Carriers there are seeing that they get better bang for their buck in terms of signal strength, audio quality, and transition to LTE from CDMA, and are moving away from GSM.
But according to the "interim" chief of Apple "CDMA doesnt really have a life to it after a certain point in time" and we all know how backwards the Chinese are in technology after seeing how awful their technology was at the Olympics.
The area in orange with the diagonal stripes. I live in Miami County (specifically southern Miami County) and work in downtown Kansas City. If I was in Johnson, I'd be okay, but, alas, I'm not.
THats too bad apple is happy with AT&T, because my first iPhone is probably going to be my last iphone. I can't even make phone calls from my major metropolitan suburban home. My next phone is probably going to be another verizon phone, unless AT&T makes some major improvements in their service. Which I don't see happening. I'll just get a cheapey verizon phone and an iPod Touch with Skype.
THats too bad apple is happy with AT&T, because my first iPhone is probably going to be my last iphone. I can't even make phone calls from my major metropolitan suburban home. My next phone is probably going to be another verizon phone, unless AT&T makes some major improvements in their service. Which I don't see happening. I'll just get a cheapey verizon phone and an iPod Touch with Skype.
Quite frankly, Apple has demostrated that it is totally fine losing (or never gaining) customers who are willing to jump through those kind of hoops to make things happen. It sucks that ATT doesn't work where you need it to, but Apple doesn't care, nor should they (because caring wouldn't change ATT's service, nor would it make it cost effective to dump the legal agreement they have with ATT for exclusivity).
You seem to be thinking that all of Apple's potential customers live in the US. They do not. In fact, the biggest market Apple can tap into is China, and they don't use CDMA.
It's certainly debatable since I believe China has ~400 million cellphone users... The biggest unknown is what percentage of those can afford an iPhone and what percentage of those actually would like the device (or how many will buy a knockoff instead).
Regardless if it's the China or the USA, customers in the USA have a very favorable opinion of the iPhone and there are 150+ million customers on other (mostly CDMA) carriers who are unable to purchase one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dagamer34
It's never been about maximizing profits... or there are a plethora of markets that Apple could get into an conceivably do well (netbooks, sub-$1000 laptops, non-Mac Pro tower PCs, etc..). But it goes against the companies core philosophy of keeping things simple. Once you start down that slippery road, it becomes all to easy to ship out crud to the market simply because it will make money.
Apple has ALWAYS been about maximizing profits... Anyways, I don't buy the "complexity" argument. It doesn't make sense from a profit perspective, and regardless Apple could make the next iPhone with a dual-radio baseband that supports both standards...
Quote:
Originally Posted by cameronj
....Apple would surely profit (if all such exclusive contracts were removed from the equation) by making an iPhone they could sell to Verizon. The engineering costs would be minimal compared to the huge market opportunity. But ATT is making up for that with its payments to Apple. Those payments are not reflected in profit and loss statements, but go straight to Apple's balance sheet as one time items.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cameronj
about maximizing profits. And given the world the way it IS, not the way we wish it would be, being with one carrier in the USA maximizes profits better than being with both bigs because of the large subsidies and because of ATT's willingness to give Apple tons of control and cash in return for not making a Verizon iPhone.
So Apple is getting more from AT&T then they could make selling another 5-10 million iPhones on Verizon/Sprint? I HIGHLY doubt that... I don't remember the exact figure, but I believe the new deal is that Apple is getting around $500 from AT&T for each iPhone sold and in exchange not receiving any monthly commission.
So lets go with a theoretical 7 million CDMA iPhones sold over the next 24 months, which I think is quite conservative even especially with the new model and firmware 3.0.
7 Million iPhones sold @ $300/phone= $2.1 Billion. You'd have to be nuts to think AT&T is going to be paying Apple anywhere NEAR that amount for an exclusivity agreement.. I can't imagine more than $100 million or more..
So Apple is getting more from AT&T then they could make selling another 5-10 million iPhones on Verizon/Sprint? I HIGHLY doubt that... I don't remember the exact figure, but I believe the new deal is that Apple is getting around $500 from AT&T for each iPhone sold and in exchange not receiving any monthly commission.
So lets go with a theoretical 7 million CDMA iPhones sold over the next 24 months, which I think is quite conservative even especially with the new model and firmware 3.0.
7 Million iPhones sold @ $300/phone= $2.1 Billion. You'd have to be nuts to think AT&T is going to be paying Apple anywhere NEAR that amount for an exclusivity agreement.. I can't imagine more than $100 million or more..
Again, you're talking numbers and neglecting the non-monetary benefits/costs.
Apple and ATT have a LEGAL AGREEMENT that forbids Apple from selling phones to Verizon. The costs of breaking that agreement could be ANYTHING, and are not related to the profits that Apple might earn from selling those Verizon iPhones.
I've never denied that Apple would make a profit on the phones themselves, after factoring in engineering costs. But that's not the only thing at play. Apple has to break a legal agreement to do what you suggest, and the costs of breaking the legal agreement are known only to Apple and ATT.
One thing we DO know. Apple has not decided that it's worth what it would cost them to break the agreement. Surely you agree with that? So if Apple, knowing fully the costs of breaking the agreement, and presumably having a pretty darn good idea of the benefits that they would gain from Verizon's sales, has decided that the costs are more than the benefits, how can you argue?
But according to the "interim" chief of Apple "CDMA doesnt really have a life to it after a certain point in time" and we all know how backwards the Chinese are in technology after seeing how awful their technology was at the Olympics.
What Tim Cook meant was that in a couple years, most everything (including Verizon and China) will be transitioning completely to LTE anyway, so why start supporting a dying technology? It's a sound business decision if you ask me, since it would cost too much than it's worth for Apple to create two separate phones only to have everything merge back into one again in a year or two. You talk so much about people here drinking the Kool-Aid, but you really need to get some help for your Haterade addiction.
Apple has ALWAYS been about maximizing profits... Anyways, I don't buy the "complexity" argument. It doesn't make sense from a profit perspective, and regardless Apple could make the next iPhone with a dual-radio baseband that supports both standards...
So Apple is getting more from AT&T then they could make selling another 5-10 million iPhones on Verizon/Sprint? I HIGHLY doubt that... I don't remember the exact figure, but I believe the new deal is that Apple is getting around $500 from AT&T for each iPhone sold and in exchange not receiving any monthly commission.
So lets go with a theoretical 7 million CDMA iPhones sold over the next 24 months, which I think is quite conservative even especially with the new model and firmware 3.0.
7 Million iPhones sold @ $300/phone= $2.1 Billion. You'd have to be nuts to think AT&T is going to be paying Apple anywhere NEAR that amount for an exclusivity agreement.. I can't imagine more than $100 million or more..
I think you are thinking of short term gains, not long term. Apple thinks very long term, well beyond any other CE company I know of.
You are absolutely right, they could have not sided with a carrier and come out with a GSM/UMTS and A CDMA/CDMA2000 iPhone right out of the gate. They could have sold it with every major carrier.
They would also have issues with battery life to radios as it was their first device. They wouldn't have been able to get $20 unlimited data like they did with AT&T. They wouldn't have gotten the unlimited data to drop over the next year for the rest of the US to $30. They wouldn't have been able to include Visual Voicemail as a free feature. They probably would have had to remove YouTube and Gogole Maps from at least Verizon's version of the device when subsidized. They would have had higher development cost which have come through in the initial pricing. They would have had a great start and then it would have been like every other device on the market.
They wouldn't have been able to get song downloads over the carrier's network or start a vendor controlled App Store that allowed downloads over the carrier's network. They would have been put in the same poor position that every other handset manufacturer is in and what they thought would happen to Apple after they got here. Nothing innovate or unique in any way, just a fancy GUI and decent web browser.
Apple is doing what Apple does best, they are starting with something single minded, focused and expanding from there. They have a GSM-based device which is the developed world's standard, and they have slowly improved the HW and SW from there.
If the goal was a short sided increase in profit then there would have no reason to update the original iPhones to v2.0 or to v3.0. The original iPhone will be going into its third year and it's getting the same OS and pretty much all the SW features of the new device coming out this summer. What other phone has done that? It doesn't make sense to do that if short term profits are so important.
I'm quite sure AT&T is paying Apple more than $100M. For Apple and AT&T that number is so ridiculously low. The subsidy off the retail price is usually $200-300. That is retail price, not wholesale price, but AT&T also has to pay for this exclusivity and each iPhone contract has a required unlimited at a charge of $30/month, which in itself is unique to phones prior to the iPhone. We can look at the non-GAAP iPhone and AppleTV sales data to get a pretty good idea about much Apple is getting per unit worldwide.
The bottom line is, Apple couldn't have made a game changer without a carrier that would give them free reign. The best choice was AT&T. The best choice for China is China Unicom with their GSM-based network. These are the biggest networks in their respective countries so Apple can court the largest and then get a better deal from the smaller companies. It's a great strategy and benefits Apple in the long run a lot more than throwing multiple unlocked devices into the market to see where they land.
What Tim Cook meant was that in a couple years, most everything (including Verizon and China) will be transitioning completely to LTE anyway, so why start supporting a dying technology? It's a sound business decision if you ask me, since it would cost too much than it's worth for Apple to create two separate phones only to have everything merge back into one again in a year or two. You talk so much about people here drinking the Kool-Aid, but you really need to get some help for your Haterade addiction.
Even when LTE is running strong phones will still have CDMA/CDMA200 radios in them, just like we have CDMA radios despite pretty solid CDMA2000 coverage. Unless there is a CDMA/CDMA2000/GSM/UMTS chipset arrive on the scene that small phones still won't be able to cross network types in the US. But I think that will be very likely in several years.
Go the 2 device solution: blkbry, nokia etc. phone on verizon, t-mobile, etc. with an ipod Touch. Your favorite carrier and iTunes etc. Apple "might" see things differently if their new iPod Touches far outsell their new iPhones.
Go the 2 device solution: blkbry, nokia etc. phone on verizon, t-mobile, etc. with an ipod Touch. Your favorite carrier and iTunes etc. Apple "might" see things differently if their new iPod Touches far outsell their new iPhones.
Despite it's higher capacity and lack of a contract and associated month fees the Touch is still below the iPhone in total unit sales. I would have thought it would have easily trounced it. The iPhone only had a couple month head start.
I think it will once the v3.0 OS comes out and people start making slick D-pads for it, making it the new gaming console to have. But even then, there is no reason for Apple to break the contract with AT&T. It's not like a 3G iPhone will work on anyone else's network in the US.
Go the 2 device solution: blkbry, nokia etc. phone on verizon, t-mobile, etc. with an ipod Touch. Your favorite carrier and iTunes etc. Apple "might" see things differently if their new iPod Touches far outsell their new iPhones.
Yeah, for all those people who were totally tired of having a CELL phone and want to go back to just having a land line. iPod touch + skype isn't going to cause even a blip in the relative sales of iPhones vs iPod Touches. The whole appeal of an iPhone is that no one wants to carry around a separate device for email, internet and music.
Wanting to be GSM-only only doesn't explain why Apple hasn't made a deal with T-Mobile. In cities like Seattle, service would be better. I know people with jail-broken iPhones who use T-Mobile because even with a data plan it costs them less. An a lot of us aren't on the go enough to justify $70 or more a month for AT&T's pricey package.
You really think that if T-Mobile had iPhone they would keep their Blackberry prices on data roming etc.
Comments
That doesn't jive with what I've been reading on the telecom news sites.
China is well mixed like the US. there largest carrier is CDMA-based.
I'd say that my worst AT&T coverage was in SF and Oakland areas. Sometimes it would literally fluctuate on the handset every few seconds. It's been about a year so I hope things have improved.
That's just odd... I live/work in San Francisco and work a lot in Richmond across the Bay. Reception for me is excellent in all the areas except for one dead spot in Richmod near San Pablo. Go figure.
That's just odd... I live/work in San Francisco and work a lot in Richmond across the Bay. Reception for me is excellent in all the areas except for one dead spot in Richmod near San Pablo. Go figure.
It's been a year, and that is a long time for AT&T to get things more covered. I was in Walnut Creek area around Christmas this past year and had EDGE with one to two bars, as did the AT&T Palm Treos, in a nice neighborhood. Makes no sense sometimes.
It's been a year, and that is a long time for AT&T to get things more covered. I was in Walnut Creek area around Christmas this past year and had EDGE with one to two bars, as did the AT&T Palm Treos, in a nice neighborhood. Makes no sense sometimes.
You must have went off you kool-aid meds if you're admitting you had a weak signal.
Seriously, ever wonder why both signals were on AT&T? Huh- ever?
That doesn't jive with what I've been reading on the telecom news sites. What I've been seeing is CDMA is widely used in China, and is actually increasing. Carriers there are seeing that they get better bang for their buck in terms of signal strength, audio quality, and transition to LTE from CDMA, and are moving away from GSM.
But according to the "interim" chief of Apple "CDMA doesnt really have a life to it after a certain point in time" and we all know how backwards the Chinese are in technology after seeing how awful their technology was at the Olympics.
Just whereabout is it not covered? http://www.wireless.att.com/coverage...585&sci=6&3g=t
The area in orange with the diagonal stripes. I live in Miami County (specifically southern Miami County) and work in downtown Kansas City. If I was in Johnson, I'd be okay, but, alas, I'm not.
Just whereabout is it not covered? http://www.wireless.att.com/coverage...585&sci=6&3g=t
Leavenworth ? IPhone reception is lousy in there.
Why is it a windoze world? Why did people vote for W Bush twice?
Because Al Egore was inventing the internet.
THats too bad apple is happy with AT&T, because my first iPhone is probably going to be my last iphone. I can't even make phone calls from my major metropolitan suburban home. My next phone is probably going to be another verizon phone, unless AT&T makes some major improvements in their service. Which I don't see happening. I'll just get a cheapey verizon phone and an iPod Touch with Skype.
Quite frankly, Apple has demostrated that it is totally fine losing (or never gaining) customers who are willing to jump through those kind of hoops to make things happen. It sucks that ATT doesn't work where you need it to, but Apple doesn't care, nor should they (because caring wouldn't change ATT's service, nor would it make it cost effective to dump the legal agreement they have with ATT for exclusivity).
You seem to be thinking that all of Apple's potential customers live in the US. They do not. In fact, the biggest market Apple can tap into is China, and they don't use CDMA.
It's certainly debatable since I believe China has ~400 million cellphone users... The biggest unknown is what percentage of those can afford an iPhone and what percentage of those actually would like the device (or how many will buy a knockoff instead).
Regardless if it's the China or the USA, customers in the USA have a very favorable opinion of the iPhone and there are 150+ million customers on other (mostly CDMA) carriers who are unable to purchase one.
It's never been about maximizing profits... or there are a plethora of markets that Apple could get into an conceivably do well (netbooks, sub-$1000 laptops, non-Mac Pro tower PCs, etc..). But it goes against the companies core philosophy of keeping things simple. Once you start down that slippery road, it becomes all to easy to ship out crud to the market simply because it will make money.
Apple has ALWAYS been about maximizing profits... Anyways, I don't buy the "complexity" argument. It doesn't make sense from a profit perspective, and regardless Apple could make the next iPhone with a dual-radio baseband that supports both standards...
....Apple would surely profit (if all such exclusive contracts were removed from the equation) by making an iPhone they could sell to Verizon. The engineering costs would be minimal compared to the huge market opportunity. But ATT is making up for that with its payments to Apple. Those payments are not reflected in profit and loss statements, but go straight to Apple's balance sheet as one time items.
about maximizing profits. And given the world the way it IS, not the way we wish it would be, being with one carrier in the USA maximizes profits better than being with both bigs because of the large subsidies and because of ATT's willingness to give Apple tons of control and cash in return for not making a Verizon iPhone.
So Apple is getting more from AT&T then they could make selling another 5-10 million iPhones on Verizon/Sprint? I HIGHLY doubt that... I don't remember the exact figure, but I believe the new deal is that Apple is getting around $500 from AT&T for each iPhone sold and in exchange not receiving any monthly commission.
So lets go with a theoretical 7 million CDMA iPhones sold over the next 24 months, which I think is quite conservative even especially with the new model and firmware 3.0.
7 Million iPhones sold @ $300/phone= $2.1 Billion. You'd have to be nuts to think AT&T is going to be paying Apple anywhere NEAR that amount for an exclusivity agreement.. I can't imagine more than $100 million or more..
So Apple is getting more from AT&T then they could make selling another 5-10 million iPhones on Verizon/Sprint? I HIGHLY doubt that... I don't remember the exact figure, but I believe the new deal is that Apple is getting around $500 from AT&T for each iPhone sold and in exchange not receiving any monthly commission.
So lets go with a theoretical 7 million CDMA iPhones sold over the next 24 months, which I think is quite conservative even especially with the new model and firmware 3.0.
7 Million iPhones sold @ $300/phone= $2.1 Billion. You'd have to be nuts to think AT&T is going to be paying Apple anywhere NEAR that amount for an exclusivity agreement.. I can't imagine more than $100 million or more..
Again, you're talking numbers and neglecting the non-monetary benefits/costs.
Apple and ATT have a LEGAL AGREEMENT that forbids Apple from selling phones to Verizon. The costs of breaking that agreement could be ANYTHING, and are not related to the profits that Apple might earn from selling those Verizon iPhones.
I've never denied that Apple would make a profit on the phones themselves, after factoring in engineering costs. But that's not the only thing at play. Apple has to break a legal agreement to do what you suggest, and the costs of breaking the legal agreement are known only to Apple and ATT.
One thing we DO know. Apple has not decided that it's worth what it would cost them to break the agreement. Surely you agree with that? So if Apple, knowing fully the costs of breaking the agreement, and presumably having a pretty darn good idea of the benefits that they would gain from Verizon's sales, has decided that the costs are more than the benefits, how can you argue?
But according to the "interim" chief of Apple "CDMA doesnt really have a life to it after a certain point in time" and we all know how backwards the Chinese are in technology after seeing how awful their technology was at the Olympics.
What Tim Cook meant was that in a couple years, most everything (including Verizon and China) will be transitioning completely to LTE anyway, so why start supporting a dying technology? It's a sound business decision if you ask me, since it would cost too much than it's worth for Apple to create two separate phones only to have everything merge back into one again in a year or two. You talk so much about people here drinking the Kool-Aid, but you really need to get some help for your Haterade addiction.
Apple has ALWAYS been about maximizing profits... Anyways, I don't buy the "complexity" argument. It doesn't make sense from a profit perspective, and regardless Apple could make the next iPhone with a dual-radio baseband that supports both standards...
So Apple is getting more from AT&T then they could make selling another 5-10 million iPhones on Verizon/Sprint? I HIGHLY doubt that... I don't remember the exact figure, but I believe the new deal is that Apple is getting around $500 from AT&T for each iPhone sold and in exchange not receiving any monthly commission.
So lets go with a theoretical 7 million CDMA iPhones sold over the next 24 months, which I think is quite conservative even especially with the new model and firmware 3.0.
7 Million iPhones sold @ $300/phone= $2.1 Billion. You'd have to be nuts to think AT&T is going to be paying Apple anywhere NEAR that amount for an exclusivity agreement.. I can't imagine more than $100 million or more..
I think you are thinking of short term gains, not long term. Apple thinks very long term, well beyond any other CE company I know of.
You are absolutely right, they could have not sided with a carrier and come out with a GSM/UMTS and A CDMA/CDMA2000 iPhone right out of the gate. They could have sold it with every major carrier.
They would also have issues with battery life to radios as it was their first device. They wouldn't have been able to get $20 unlimited data like they did with AT&T. They wouldn't have gotten the unlimited data to drop over the next year for the rest of the US to $30. They wouldn't have been able to include Visual Voicemail as a free feature. They probably would have had to remove YouTube and Gogole Maps from at least Verizon's version of the device when subsidized. They would have had higher development cost which have come through in the initial pricing. They would have had a great start and then it would have been like every other device on the market.
They wouldn't have been able to get song downloads over the carrier's network or start a vendor controlled App Store that allowed downloads over the carrier's network. They would have been put in the same poor position that every other handset manufacturer is in and what they thought would happen to Apple after they got here. Nothing innovate or unique in any way, just a fancy GUI and decent web browser.
Apple is doing what Apple does best, they are starting with something single minded, focused and expanding from there. They have a GSM-based device which is the developed world's standard, and they have slowly improved the HW and SW from there.
If the goal was a short sided increase in profit then there would have no reason to update the original iPhones to v2.0 or to v3.0. The original iPhone will be going into its third year and it's getting the same OS and pretty much all the SW features of the new device coming out this summer. What other phone has done that? It doesn't make sense to do that if short term profits are so important.
I'm quite sure AT&T is paying Apple more than $100M. For Apple and AT&T that number is so ridiculously low. The subsidy off the retail price is usually $200-300. That is retail price, not wholesale price, but AT&T also has to pay for this exclusivity and each iPhone contract has a required unlimited at a charge of $30/month, which in itself is unique to phones prior to the iPhone. We can look at the non-GAAP iPhone and AppleTV sales data to get a pretty good idea about much Apple is getting per unit worldwide.
The bottom line is, Apple couldn't have made a game changer without a carrier that would give them free reign. The best choice was AT&T. The best choice for China is China Unicom with their GSM-based network. These are the biggest networks in their respective countries so Apple can court the largest and then get a better deal from the smaller companies. It's a great strategy and benefits Apple in the long run a lot more than throwing multiple unlocked devices into the market to see where they land.
What Tim Cook meant was that in a couple years, most everything (including Verizon and China) will be transitioning completely to LTE anyway, so why start supporting a dying technology? It's a sound business decision if you ask me, since it would cost too much than it's worth for Apple to create two separate phones only to have everything merge back into one again in a year or two. You talk so much about people here drinking the Kool-Aid, but you really need to get some help for your Haterade addiction.
Even when LTE is running strong phones will still have CDMA/CDMA200 radios in them, just like we have CDMA radios despite pretty solid CDMA2000 coverage. Unless there is a CDMA/CDMA2000/GSM/UMTS chipset arrive on the scene that small phones still won't be able to cross network types in the US. But I think that will be very likely in several years.
Go the 2 device solution: blkbry, nokia etc. phone on verizon, t-mobile, etc. with an ipod Touch. Your favorite carrier and iTunes etc. Apple "might" see things differently if their new iPod Touches far outsell their new iPhones.
Despite it's higher capacity and lack of a contract and associated month fees the Touch is still below the iPhone in total unit sales. I would have thought it would have easily trounced it. The iPhone only had a couple month head start.
I think it will once the v3.0 OS comes out and people start making slick D-pads for it, making it the new gaming console to have. But even then, there is no reason for Apple to break the contract with AT&T. It's not like a 3G iPhone will work on anyone else's network in the US.
Go the 2 device solution: blkbry, nokia etc. phone on verizon, t-mobile, etc. with an ipod Touch. Your favorite carrier and iTunes etc. Apple "might" see things differently if their new iPod Touches far outsell their new iPhones.
Yeah, for all those people who were totally tired of having a CELL phone and want to go back to just having a land line. iPod touch + skype isn't going to cause even a blip in the relative sales of iPhones vs iPod Touches. The whole appeal of an iPhone is that no one wants to carry around a separate device for email, internet and music.
Wanting to be GSM-only only doesn't explain why Apple hasn't made a deal with T-Mobile. In cities like Seattle, service would be better. I know people with jail-broken iPhones who use T-Mobile because even with a data plan it costs them less. An a lot of us aren't on the go enough to justify $70 or more a month for AT&T's pricey package.
You really think that if T-Mobile had iPhone they would keep their Blackberry prices on data roming etc.
I don't think so.
jk
I would love to see apple monopoly though, just to see how big their balls will grow