Why America makes the iPod look open
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Applications, Windows Mobile, Mobile, Apple on
We spotted a blog post the other day claiming that the iPhone set new standards as an open phone platform . Rubbish, Mary said; you can’t install your choice of applications without hacking the pone via an image bug in the browser - and if you do, then you can’t get the updates that come out because they fix the hole and lock the iPhone right up again. How can you call that open? Apple may have an SDK on the way, but the iPhone is as closed as one of LG’s shiny bling machines.
The examples in the article look odd to British eyes, as we’ve become used to ubiquitous high-speed data and unlocked smartphones. You can run Google Maps and get your location from the mobile phone masts? You can do that on Windows Mobile, and you can have Live Search and Yahoo! Go on there too, along with more apps than you can shake a stick at. And you can search your emails properly (once you upgrade to Windows Mobile 6; if your operator hasn’t made an upgrade available and neither has the manufacturer, check the enthusiast sites for ROM upgrades that won’t compromise security or stop you being able to get future updates).
What he means, I said, is that it’s a new level of openness on the part of the AT&T network in accepting a device like the iPhone in the first place. Look at the ill-fated ROKR; it had a paltry capacity for music, a terrible interface and was generally a pitiful excuse for a music phone, because Motorola did everything the networks wanted. Verizon put pressure on Palm to lock down the Bluetooth profile on Treo smartphones so you couldn’t transfer files directly to force subscribers to send the photos they took with a Treo through Verizon’s pay-for picture messaging service. Things haven’t been as open as we’d like them in the UK either, as Orange used to require applications running on its phones to be signed with its certificate before you could install them (though there was a relatively easy official unlock process).
For the iPhone to look like a beacon of openness in this scenario you have to ignore the fact that US operators like T-Mobile have been carrying much the same range of Windows Mobile devices we have in the UK and while they may be locked down a little more, big-name apps like Google Maps still run on them just fine. One thing to note: GSM-derived technologies and networks are still the minority in the US, and CDMA networks like Verizon and Sprint have the largest market share – but CDMA’s influence is weakening. The plan to switch away from the tightly-controlled CDMA technology in favour of LTE – the successor to 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA – may be as much of a reason for Verizon promising to open up its network as the success of the ‘open’ iPhone.
But Apple tends to punch above its weight. In the last three months of 2007 Apple sold 2.3 million iPhones (and about the same number of Macs). Sony Ericsson shipped almost 31 million phones in the same time; Samsung sold 46.3 million. Motorola – a company that’s doing so badly at phone sales that CEO Ed Zander had to step down – sold 40.9 million phones. And Nokia shipped as many phones as everyone else put together - 133.5 million handsets.
The vast majority of those are feature phones rather than smartphones. Last time I checked RIM only had around 10 million BlackBerry users. But if Microsoft hits its predictions of selling 20 million Windows Mobile phones in the year ending this July (up from 11 million the previous year), that will be around 5 million in 3 months. Selling half that many for a smartphone you can’t even install applications on means Apple is having an impact – and if the networks do see sense in the US, open smartphones from Windows Mobile to Linux will get a lot more useful too.
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