5 ms·
They may yet blow everyone's doors off with first-class integration of Skype. But given their position in the marketplace, and carrier's dislike of anything th
by roc 14y ago
They may yet blow everyone's doors off with first-class integration of Skype. But given their position in the marketplace, and carrier's dislike of anything that pushes them toward being dumb pipes any faster, color me pessimistic.
They could also seriously upend the market with a skype-only no-phone-plan, PMP/phone that runs off wifi and/or prepaid data. That could justify the price of the Skype purchase as well. And I'm just as pessimistic about that.
I'm not saying they won't ever do anything with it. But they paid a pretty penny and thus far don't seem to have any coherent plan.
- untog 14y agoI'm pretty sure they have confirmed that Skype will have deep integration in WP8. And look at BBM, iMessage, Google Voice... the carriers may not like these things, but so far they've been unable to stop them.
- roc 14y agoRIM and Apple have gotten away with what they have because customers did/will ask for them by name. Microsoft is not in the same place.
- brudgers 14y agoThinking about Skype in terms of carriers is analogous to thinking about IE in terms of Compuserve and AOL.
- roc 14y agoIf Compuserve and AOL had a veto over what browsers people could use, yes, that would be a decent analogue. It's not that Microsoft needs carrier approval in a technical way. But they absolutely need to be on the carriers' good side in a business sense. If Microsoft is pushing products that will erode carrier profit margin, the carrier stores are not going to push Microsoft's phones. And Microsoft has had little luck to date selling phones without their help.
- brudgers 14y agoCarriers don't have veto power over Skype. If they did, nobody would be using it. Instead it is a worldwide success. The US model of carrier subsidies for mobile phones is not only limited in its geographic scope, it is exceedingly vulnerable to disruption for the same reasons that cable and traditional phone companies carry internet traffic for a flat fee.