Had To Give In Some Day
We've been trying to resist mentioning anything about that phone that some company is releaseing in I think it was the US around about now, but this bit of interesting rumour popped up on the rather well-connected Mr Kewney's site recently: 3G iPhone in Europe on Voda/TMob/Carphone Warehouse by end of year.
It all sounds reasonable enough, though he makes the odd slightly skewed comments - suggesting Orange wouldn't take the phone because they have strong branding and like to turn off handset features, which is a trend that Vodafone has led.
The 3G networking obviously would be rather useful over here, though it does rather make a mockery of Mr Job's recent 3G put-down... which appears to be a pretty standard Jobsian diversion from the truth, attempting to sound completely plausible and reasonable whilst not addressing the real issues and covering up for weaknesses in his product.
The dual Voda/TMob thing - at the expense of Orange, O2 and 3 - seems weird though. Working with multiple carriers is far more of an issue in the US, where every carrier has good and bad coverage areas (more bad then good for AT&T, admittedly), number portability is relatively new and the technologies are so different. In Europe these things don't matter so much - coverage is pretty uniformly acceptable and portability is the norm. Without exclusivity you get much less operator money, so why artificially halve your target market?
Anyway, details. Will be interesting, and I'd feel upset if I'd bought the EDGE version right about now...
It all sounds reasonable enough, though he makes the odd slightly skewed comments - suggesting Orange wouldn't take the phone because they have strong branding and like to turn off handset features, which is a trend that Vodafone has led.
The 3G networking obviously would be rather useful over here, though it does rather make a mockery of Mr Job's recent 3G put-down... which appears to be a pretty standard Jobsian diversion from the truth, attempting to sound completely plausible and reasonable whilst not addressing the real issues and covering up for weaknesses in his product.
The dual Voda/TMob thing - at the expense of Orange, O2 and 3 - seems weird though. Working with multiple carriers is far more of an issue in the US, where every carrier has good and bad coverage areas (more bad then good for AT&T, admittedly), number portability is relatively new and the technologies are so different. In Europe these things don't matter so much - coverage is pretty uniformly acceptable and portability is the norm. Without exclusivity you get much less operator money, so why artificially halve your target market?
Anyway, details. Will be interesting, and I'd feel upset if I'd bought the EDGE version right about now...
Inspiration
posted by raddedas at 11:53 am
1 Comments:
The strong operator tie-in of Vodafone is most likely necessary to get support for the proprietary features like the über-voicemail thingie... maybe Voda doesn't want to share the glory with Orange?
As for feeling bad about buying the EDGE version - you can't buy a US-spec model in Europe anyway, and I understand 3G is something of a novelty Stateside?
1:45 pm
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