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> To be fair, high-end nokia did already have "open mobile internet" available. Not really sure this is relevant. Apple forced the carriers to change their bus

> To be fair, high-end nokia did already have "open mobile internet" available. Not really sure this is relevant. Apple forced the carriers to change their business models -- first AT&T and then the others; Nokia et al just played along. I was really disappointed that Google did not persevere with selling their own phone -- there was this shining moment where it looked like Apple and Google would unite to tear down the carriers; I think Google's shying away from customer service may well prove pivotal -- e.g. it's going to be hard to sell cars if you don't do customer service. People often point out that Apple doesn't really understand the cloud or that Amazon's forays into hardware have been at best mixed. Maybe. Google -- alone of its rivals -- doesn't understand end-users (its customers are advertisers). Which is more important in the long run? (Bezos may suck as a boss, but Amazon's customer service is first-rate.)

masklinn 11y ago
> Not really sure this is relevant. Apple forced the carriers to change their business models -- first AT&T and then the others 1. didn't see it then, don't see it now. Then again I'm in europe, mayhaps US carriers were significantly more overbearing. I don't recall carriers being good friends of the consumer though so not overly likely 2. this responds to a comment specifically mentioning allowing "an open mobile internet". Again this might have been because I was in Europe, but as my comment notes I did have access to an "open mobile internet". The experience sucked but technically there it was.
- acdha 11y ago
  > 1. didn't see it then, don't see it now. Then again I'm in europe, mayhaps US carriers were significantly more overbearing. I don't recall carriers being good friends of the consumer though so not overly likely The U.S. was indeed terrible: very restricted competition on phones (two year contracts, models often specific to one carrier, etc.), prohibitively high data rates and extreme barriers to entry for anyone trying to build a phone-based business. Around 2000, I worked for a web company in San Diego where Qualcomm was trying to build a stable of companies developing mobile apps to boost demand for better hardware. We looked into the business model and each of the U.S. carriers wanted roughly $50K simply for the privilege of listing your app in their store plus a generous cut of the sales, should you have any and that number wasn't fixed but based on what they thought you could afford so our better-known clients got estimates well into 6 figures, again simply for being listed. Unsurprisingly, we looked at WAP instead but it was so limited in practice that we gave up and nobody I knew used WAP or J2ME apps. As far as I could tell, that only changed when Apple had enough clout to get AT&T to go for a smaller slice of a much, much larger pie.
  - masklinn 11y ago
    > The U.S. was indeed terrible: very restricted competition on phones (two year contracts, models often specific to one carrier, etc.), prohibitively high data rates and extreme barriers to entry for anyone trying to build a phone-based business. For the most part that was also the case in Europe, though countries started cracking down on some of the bullshit fairly early (e.g. the ability to move your number from one carrier to the other and requirements that phones be unlockable after some time). I don't know about the phone-based business aspect.
    - acdha 11y ago
      In the U.S. number portability didn't happen until November 2003: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-03-284A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-03-284A1.p... Unlocking wasn't a requirement until last year: http://www.cnet.com/news/president-signs-cell-phone-unlocking-bill-into-law/ http://www.cnet.com/news/president-signs-cell-phone-unlockin... The big thing which I believe really killed business options, though, was data pricing. Before the iPhone made affordable unlimited plans the expected default, it was assumed that anyone who wanted data was a business user on an expense account and the pricing was so high that everyone I knew treated app usage as an emergency-only measure rather than a part of daily life.
  - simonh 11y ago
    I remember reading a blog post by a mobile dev manager saying that it was was shocking that the iPhone didn't support J2ME and that Apple would inevitably be forced to support it by market realities. Good times.
xorcist 11y ago
Everybody knew were mobile telecom was heading ever since data became possible: downhill race to a commodity. You only had to look at Northen Europe or Japan to see how usage had changed. Everybody was scared. The idea that the telco controls what software you run was unknown there. Data is data. You could almost see operators taking the first steps from inflexible contracts where they gave phones away, to leasing-like models (for business customers, consumer markets went though the same change a few years later). The only surprising thing is that Apple didn't change telco business models more, but I guess they didn't have to. US telcos continued to sell phones through their own channels and didn't have to yield to bigger data plans until years later. But change is coming, because data by nature wants to be dumb. Soon all customers will find the idea of operator controlled phones just as foreign as some did ten years ago.

masklinn 11y ago

> Not really sure this is relevant. Apple forced the carriers to change their business models -- first AT&T and then the others 1. didn't see it then, don't see it now. Then again I'm in europe, mayhaps US carriers were significantly more overbearing. I don't recall carriers being good friends of the consumer though so not overly likely 2. this responds to a comment specifically mentioning allowing "an open mobile internet". Again this might have been because I was in Europe, but as my comment notes I did have access to an "open mobile internet". The experience sucked but technically there it was.

acdha 11y ago
> 1. didn't see it then, don't see it now. Then again I'm in europe, mayhaps US carriers were significantly more overbearing. I don't recall carriers being good friends of the consumer though so not overly likely The U.S. was indeed terrible: very restricted competition on phones (two year contracts, models often specific to one carrier, etc.), prohibitively high data rates and extreme barriers to entry for anyone trying to build a phone-based business. Around 2000, I worked for a web company in San Diego where Qualcomm was trying to build a stable of companies developing mobile apps to boost demand for better hardware. We looked into the business model and each of the U.S. carriers wanted roughly $50K simply for the privilege of listing your app in their store plus a generous cut of the sales, should you have any and that number wasn't fixed but based on what they thought you could afford so our better-known clients got estimates well into 6 figures, again simply for being listed. Unsurprisingly, we looked at WAP instead but it was so limited in practice that we gave up and nobody I knew used WAP or J2ME apps. As far as I could tell, that only changed when Apple had enough clout to get AT&T to go for a smaller slice of a much, much larger pie.
- masklinn 11y ago
  > The U.S. was indeed terrible: very restricted competition on phones (two year contracts, models often specific to one carrier, etc.), prohibitively high data rates and extreme barriers to entry for anyone trying to build a phone-based business. For the most part that was also the case in Europe, though countries started cracking down on some of the bullshit fairly early (e.g. the ability to move your number from one carrier to the other and requirements that phones be unlockable after some time). I don't know about the phone-based business aspect.
  - acdha 11y ago
    In the U.S. number portability didn't happen until November 2003: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-03-284A1.pdf https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-03-284A1.p... Unlocking wasn't a requirement until last year: http://www.cnet.com/news/president-signs-cell-phone-unlocking-bill-into-law/ http://www.cnet.com/news/president-signs-cell-phone-unlockin... The big thing which I believe really killed business options, though, was data pricing. Before the iPhone made affordable unlimited plans the expected default, it was assumed that anyone who wanted data was a business user on an expense account and the pricing was so high that everyone I knew treated app usage as an emergency-only measure rather than a part of daily life.
- simonh 11y ago
  I remember reading a blog post by a mobile dev manager saying that it was was shocking that the iPhone didn't support J2ME and that Apple would inevitably be forced to support it by market realities. Good times.

xorcist 11y ago

Everybody knew were mobile telecom was heading ever since data became possible: downhill race to a commodity. You only had to look at Northen Europe or Japan to see how usage had changed. Everybody was scared. The idea that the telco controls what software you run was unknown there. Data is data. You could almost see operators taking the first steps from inflexible contracts where they gave phones away, to leasing-like models (for business customers, consumer markets went though the same change a few years later). The only surprising thing is that Apple didn't change telco business models more, but I guess they didn't have to. US telcos continued to sell phones through their own channels and didn't have to yield to bigger data plans until years later. But change is coming, because data by nature wants to be dumb. Soon all customers will find the idea of operator controlled phones just as foreign as some did ten years ago.