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> Carriers still "own" customer contact in most countries. If they decide to be really afraid of Google, they will stop helping Android adoption. I wonder how
by mithaler 16y ago
> Carriers still "own" customer contact in most countries. If they decide to be really afraid of Google, they will stop helping Android adoption.
I wonder how they might do this. Possibilities I can think of:
A) Stop releasing Android phones and use WP7 and such (similarly risky, if it's actually something the market wants).
B) Keep using Android but make more deals like the one that put Bing as the unchangeable default search on the Galaxy S.
C) Fork/rebrand Android and make their own derivative.
B seems most likely--same platform so they can benefit from Google's development, but with Google services blocked.
- samstokes 16y agoThey won't do any of the above directly. Carriers don't make phones, but they do market and sell them (because they own the customer). They'll simply refuse to do so for Android phones that aren't neutered in ways acceptable to them. "Hey Motorola, of course we'll do a big marketing push for the Droid 9000, so long as it complies with our guidelines for handsets on our network. You have made sure users can't install Google Voice, haven't you? What's that? They can install any software they want? Well, maybe we'll just go for that Samsung device instead. See you next product cycle."