My view… AJC

“This is going to make the closed nature of the iPhone look like a joke.”

With the present success, as of 3-2-09, and market share gains of the iPhone, compared with the competition’s downward spiral as well as the stalling of the geeky Android platform, the one looking most “like a joke” is the PC loving, anti-Apple author of this article.

BTW, I highly doubt Apple needed AT&T to get the Iphone off the ground. With Apple’s great marketing skills, they could have sold this phone to practically anyone had it not been locked down. It is simply ridiculous to say Apple had to placate to AT&T to sell their new phone. The truth is probably a lot closer to the fact that both Apple and AT&T saw an opportunity to form an alliance that would corner the market and send checks to the banks for the length of the contract. And due to the overly forgiving nature of so many Apple users, they can get away with it.

Personally, I hope some of these class-action lawsuits against Apple for this succeed. Apple and AT&T are only serving to take this industry in the exact wrong direction.

As for the deal with AT&T, I’m sure Apple would have preferred to make the iPhone as widely available as possible. I suspect exclusivity was a necessary concession. Apple was an unproved newcomer to the cell phone business who wanted the carrier to enhance their network, support custom features (like visual voice mail), forgo additonal income from selling media, and who knows what other conditions. As you know, carriers have been traditionally been very strict about controlling the features of phones on their networks (to the detriment of consumers — My Verizon RAZR doesn’t offer voice memos even the though hardware could support it). Because of Apple’s iPhone, control of the feature set may finally be changing in favor of the handset developers.

Now that the iPhone has proven itself a huge success, Apple will be in a better bargaining position when their contract with AT&T expires. I expect other carriers will be eager to support the iPhone then.

Apple’s obnoxious ringtone purchasing policy is likewise probably mandated by the record companies. I’m sure they would have preferred to let users create ring tones from their iTunes libraries without charge.

With Jobs’ famous letter to the music industry, Apple has already stard the ball rolling toward widespread DRM-free music sales. Maybe in time he can convince record companies that the abilty to make ringtones from purchased music is an incentive to drive music sales instead of an opportunity to double dip and screw the consumer.

Apple are the good guys fighting the big telecom carriers and media industry to bring a better experience to consumers. Give ‘em a break.

Regardless of Android’s success, I’m sure the market will continue to accomodate Apple’s iPhone for those that want simplicity and elegance.