5 ms·

This guy is missing the fact that in a lot of European countries, and elsewhere in the world, carriers mean squat. The carrier is often simply the provider of t

by Aqwis 13y ago

This guy is missing the fact that in a lot of European countries, and elsewhere in the world, carriers mean squat. The carrier is often simply the provider of the SIM card you put in the phone, so carrier support is in no way needed for a phone to succeed. You don't need to be successful in the US to be successful.

girvo 13y ago
All these articles do. It's annoying.
- paulftw 13y ago
  Every european country has own laws, culture and language. They are individual markets, and each market is too small to break even after all the R&D and hardware costs.
  - EdwardDiego 13y ago
    > Every european country has own laws, culture and language. You're completely disregarding the EEC and European Parliament. As an aside on language, while on the train to Brussels from Köln, I was chatting with some Young Greens who were en route to a pan-European Green conference. One was from Serbia, one from Germany and one from France, and we were all speaking in English, it tends to function as a lingua franca, so language has never been a barrier for me yet. The multilingual capacity of Europeans really puts me to shame, my German barely goes past "I would like a beer" and "I would like a coffee". But yes, they have different languages, so i18n is a thing you have to pay attention to, and yes, they have different cultures and markets, so how you sell and engage people can differ. But you can recruit a small cadre of local sales experts to do your sales - a sister company of ours develops in the Czech Republic and sells in Poland, Romania and Turkey. The European market is hardly as balkanized as you make out. If what you say was true, then iPhones would have presumably never impacted in Europe - after all, every european country has own laws, culture and language.
    - paulftw 13y ago
      Your "counterexample" is young political activists, probably local party leaders. Those are multicultural, openminded and all. What about the average middle class, representing probably 90-99% of the buying power? I agree that it's not impossible to sell in multiple countries at once, but it's just times bigger investment to get smaller combined market than US. For Apple starting with US was a justification to spend probably billions on iPhone. Market was big enough for this gamble to make sense. You can't justify huge investments if your plan to start in Poland and then expand to Romania and Turkey. Or did that company go into all 3 countries simultaneously? And, btw, combined GDP of Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Turkey is 1.65 trillion. GDP of USA is 16.86 trillion.
  - collyw 13y ago
    Is that not similar to how the individual states in the US work? (Laws, culture to a degree, but obviously not language).
    - paulftw 13y ago
      Similar? compare California to Texas, and then compare Spain to Czech Republic. Apple needed to partner with one carrier - AT&T to sell phones in all 50 states. What's the minimum number of carriers you need to partner with in order to have a friendly carrier in each EU country?
gnaffle 13y ago
They still mean something in those countries, because carriers there still have agendas, marketing budgets, partnerships and retail stores even though they may not dictate cell phone features.
- gcb0 13y ago
  that only ever affects the bottom of the market. where i came from, you'd actually made fun of people that had the phone from the carrier billboard.
Pxtl 13y ago
Yes, but those are smaller markets. As much as we're loathe to admit it, the USA represents the largest single market of wealthy (in global terms) customers. That means the USA is the place high-end consumer tech lives or dies. Other markets are more fragmented (so they're more expensive to sell in) or less affluent. There's lots of exciting things happening in Brazil and India, but those are lower-end spin-offs. I'm a Canadian. Our entire consumer market is based on getting America's sloppy seconds. I have no illusions.
- tenfingers 13y ago
  I wouldn't say so. Without carrier restrictions, EU is much easier to sell to. In fact, in EU, the carrier is totally worthless, and the phones they usually bundle with contract plans are in general the lowest-end phones you can have. Even the iPhone deals are usually meaningless, since you can have the phone for less then a 10% difference, with the added choice of getting a better data plan at any time you wish.
  - mcv 13y ago
    Lowest end? The Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One aren't exactly low-end, and those are the two phones everybody is offering now. The ones you get for free with low-end contracts are low-end, but you can get some pretty nice discounts on high-end phones too. At least apparent discounts. You pay for them through your contract, and if the difference with a sim-only contract is small, that's because sim-only contracts are way too expensive. Carriers are big, but it is possible to get around them. Most people get a phone with contract, but a lot of people really do go sim-only. Fairphone is a nice example of a small Dutch organization that makes a revolutionary new phone (not available in the US). It's very successful so far, but also because they're not inventing their own platform; it's still Android. But the hardware is indie, so that at least can be done. (And a major carrier ordered a 1000 of them.)
hoi 13y ago
Carriers don't mean squat. They are the king makers. They control a section of the market that every smartphone mnnufacturer relied on. The Radio frequencies. This gives them power via their marketing subsidies, and it was this power they leveraged before they screwed up and ceded control to the platform. It used to be the case that the carriers controlled your wallet. Every single thing you did on the phone, the money went to the carrier, they held your credit details. AT&T screwed up and gave up consumer power.
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  The fact is that in a lot of European countries, they don't even have AT&T.
  - hoi 13y ago
    They let the cat out of the bag. Once AT&T ceded control and the popularity of iPhone as a carrier switcher came along the other carriers had to fall in line. This is not the case with Android, they don't control the updates. (Except in a stealthy way).
    - sbuk 13y ago
      And Google put straight back in in a bid to gain carrier favour with Android.

by Aqwis 13y ago

girvo 13y ago

All these articles do. It's annoying.

paulftw 13y ago
Every european country has own laws, culture and language. They are individual markets, and each market is too small to break even after all the R&D and hardware costs.
- EdwardDiego 13y ago
  > Every european country has own laws, culture and language. You're completely disregarding the EEC and European Parliament. As an aside on language, while on the train to Brussels from Köln, I was chatting with some Young Greens who were en route to a pan-European Green conference. One was from Serbia, one from Germany and one from France, and we were all speaking in English, it tends to function as a lingua franca, so language has never been a barrier for me yet. The multilingual capacity of Europeans really puts me to shame, my German barely goes past "I would like a beer" and "I would like a coffee". But yes, they have different languages, so i18n is a thing you have to pay attention to, and yes, they have different cultures and markets, so how you sell and engage people can differ. But you can recruit a small cadre of local sales experts to do your sales - a sister company of ours develops in the Czech Republic and sells in Poland, Romania and Turkey. The European market is hardly as balkanized as you make out. If what you say was true, then iPhones would have presumably never impacted in Europe - after all, every european country has own laws, culture and language.
  - paulftw 13y ago
    Your "counterexample" is young political activists, probably local party leaders. Those are multicultural, openminded and all. What about the average middle class, representing probably 90-99% of the buying power? I agree that it's not impossible to sell in multiple countries at once, but it's just times bigger investment to get smaller combined market than US. For Apple starting with US was a justification to spend probably billions on iPhone. Market was big enough for this gamble to make sense. You can't justify huge investments if your plan to start in Poland and then expand to Romania and Turkey. Or did that company go into all 3 countries simultaneously? And, btw, combined GDP of Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Turkey is 1.65 trillion. GDP of USA is 16.86 trillion.
- collyw 13y ago
  Is that not similar to how the individual states in the US work? (Laws, culture to a degree, but obviously not language).
  - paulftw 13y ago
    Similar? compare California to Texas, and then compare Spain to Czech Republic. Apple needed to partner with one carrier - AT&T to sell phones in all 50 states. What's the minimum number of carriers you need to partner with in order to have a friendly carrier in each EU country?

gnaffle 13y ago

They still mean something in those countries, because carriers there still have agendas, marketing budgets, partnerships and retail stores even though they may not dictate cell phone features.

gcb0 13y ago
that only ever affects the bottom of the market. where i came from, you'd actually made fun of people that had the phone from the carrier billboard.

Pxtl 13y ago

Yes, but those are smaller markets. As much as we're loathe to admit it, the USA represents the largest single market of wealthy (in global terms) customers. That means the USA is the place high-end consumer tech lives or dies. Other markets are more fragmented (so they're more expensive to sell in) or less affluent. There's lots of exciting things happening in Brazil and India, but those are lower-end spin-offs. I'm a Canadian. Our entire consumer market is based on getting America's sloppy seconds. I have no illusions.

tenfingers 13y ago
I wouldn't say so. Without carrier restrictions, EU is much easier to sell to. In fact, in EU, the carrier is totally worthless, and the phones they usually bundle with contract plans are in general the lowest-end phones you can have. Even the iPhone deals are usually meaningless, since you can have the phone for less then a 10% difference, with the added choice of getting a better data plan at any time you wish.
- mcv 13y ago
  Lowest end? The Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One aren't exactly low-end, and those are the two phones everybody is offering now. The ones you get for free with low-end contracts are low-end, but you can get some pretty nice discounts on high-end phones too. At least apparent discounts. You pay for them through your contract, and if the difference with a sim-only contract is small, that's because sim-only contracts are way too expensive. Carriers are big, but it is possible to get around them. Most people get a phone with contract, but a lot of people really do go sim-only. Fairphone is a nice example of a small Dutch organization that makes a revolutionary new phone (not available in the US). It's very successful so far, but also because they're not inventing their own platform; it's still Android. But the hardware is indie, so that at least can be done. (And a major carrier ordered a 1000 of them.)

hoi 13y ago

Carriers don't mean squat. They are the king makers. They control a section of the market that every smartphone mnnufacturer relied on. The Radio frequencies. This gives them power via their marketing subsidies, and it was this power they leveraged before they screwed up and ceded control to the platform. It used to be the case that the carriers controlled your wallet. Every single thing you did on the phone, the money went to the carrier, they held your credit details. AT&T screwed up and gave up consumer power.

guard-of-terra 13y ago
The fact is that in a lot of European countries, they don't even have AT&T.
- hoi 13y ago
  They let the cat out of the bag. Once AT&T ceded control and the popularity of iPhone as a carrier switcher came along the other carriers had to fall in line. This is not the case with Android, they don't control the updates. (Except in a stealthy way).
  - sbuk 13y ago
    And Google put straight back in in a bid to gain carrier favour with Android.