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Show me how that's impacted the iPhone's sales.
by unalone 17y ago
Show me how that's impacted the iPhone's sales.
- jacquesm 17y agoFor that you'd have to have access to an alternative universe where all this had not happened, so you are asking something that is not really possible. But the Google voice fall out went so far as to get the FCC involved, surely that would have some consumer effect ?
- unalone 17y agoConsumers don't really care about legal issues. I'm at a school with a lot of geeky people. They all use iPhones. We sometimes talk about how much we like them. Nobody's mentioned the FCC before. I doubt most of them know what Google Voice is.
- GHFigs 17y agoI think you can get some idea of the effect by looking at the iPhone's competitors with more open development platforms.
- Kadin 17y agoI do not have an iPhone, and I would if it were not for the closed platform and tie-in with the App Store. (For the record, I have a Nokia E61. It's not as slick but I can run whatever the hell I like on it, and it's an unlocked GSM handset.) Obviously that is anecdotal but it is the best I can do, since there is no way to demonstrate conclusively exactly how many sales have been lost overall as a result of their strategy. I'm sure there are other people who have made the same decision to avoid the platform; probably not a lot, but some. The question is going to be whether, going forward, the App Store becomes enough of a headache to Apple (in terms of bad PR and being a lawsuit or even anti-trust magnet) to make them reconsider closing the platform, or at least make it look like less of an unqualified good to other manufacturers who might try to do the same thing in the future. It seems like the sort of thing that will eventually collapse under the weight of its own success (possibly in the form of monopolization claims), if not to direct competition from an open platform.
- unalone 17y agoI agree that there are edge cases like yourself who've been moved by the crisis. I also like that thanks to Google and Palm, there are now legitimate options beyond the iPhone that aren't terrible. (With apologies to RIM, which was good before Apple did a thing but which bombed at making their multitouch OS.) However, my point was that by and large the market is apathetic, and it's unclear whether that will change before Apple fixes itself on its own. I'm certain Apple's working on making things better, because Apple's more aware than anybody else what happens when you lose out because of your platform.