The iPhone 4 is here with a preorder on June 15th ( I recommend to preorder this device) as will be the hottest thing this summer, and a release date on the 24th (you’ll be lucky if you get it that day or week)
The iPhone 4 comes with teleconferencing, facetime they call it, with a camera in the front and in the back as well with they Apple chip A4 and a larger battery, however the main improvement for me is the 2 external antennas and the glass case, makes the device extremely sexy.
With the release of the iPhone 4 AT&T announced an increase on their data plans, what possibly reason AT&T has to want to do that. Will that effect the Apple iPhone 4 sales? Is Apple angry at AT&T for doing that? On the keynote of the WWDC, Steve Jobs didn’t mention anything related to that effect, something that is rare from him, you can read that in many ways, I personally read it as AT&T had to increase the prices to pay Apple for the exclusivity of the iPhone. I’m sure that Steve Jobs would love to go with Verizon Wireless and tap into all those customer waiting for the device, as history proofs that not everybody that wants an iPhone, will move to AT&T for it, so what can AT&T possibly offer Apple to keep them away from all those customers? Maybe a percentage on the data plans per iPhone? If so a horrible move from the wireless company that hadn’t upgraded their network yet to be ready for 4G or to avoid their “dead zones”, very well known to any iPhone users.
This contract between Apple and AT&T is hurting the consumer, exclusivity goes always against us the users, something that should be looked into the way the European Community does for any company selling and acting in Europe. Let me give you a simple example how exclusivities in a country should be regulated, this is an experience that I had with Verizon:
Verizon FIOS is the only company in my neighborhood for Internet, phone and TV. We had them for Internet for the past 2+ years, their billing department is awful, half of the times, they cannot find us in the system, they were billing us for a telephone line that we didn’t have, setting up automatic payments hasn’t work for the past 9 months and my wife has spent many hours on the phone with Verizon to make sure the next month they’ll be able to bill us automatically, they have failed 9 times! Because of that, now we are to them a risky account, so when last week we tried to make a change in our account, not billing for God sake, we spent a year in that battle and we have lost, we just wanted to add FIOS TV and get rid of Satellite TV. When I called I got informed that now if I want any changes to my account, I would have to give them a deposit of $400 and that was not negotiable. Even if the billing problems were all their wrong doing. Our constant requests from Verizon to fix it put us in a bad status with that company.
In a normal world, I’ll call their competition and I would request services from them, however Verizon knows that they do not have any competition on my neighborhood, so the prices are high and service is less than desirable, yet the only 480p provider for TV in the hood as well as the only one providing FIOS Internet, so now I’m paying more than I would do if they have competition.
What AT&T and Apple are doing, is avoiding the competition as well, now if you want the iPhone, you’ll have to pay the high data plan and to enjoy the drop calls every time you move 5 feet. By Steve Jobs’ silence we can read that it won’t be an iPhone 4 for Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile, as well for no talking about 4G, this is the confirmation we need it from Apple to let us know that AT&T is not going to spend money in improving their infrastructure.
I would say that all that is really bad news for iPhone users, without any doubt, when the iPhone 4 comes out on the 24th, will be the best SmartPhone out there, no other smartphone will compare to that version. Yet the iPhone 4 won’t be never have the majority of the market like RIM.
I can see AT&T keep adding $$$ at your bill and dropping services. The normal process from a company that does not need to compete in a market space. And this is why we need the consumer voice to have more power in the US the same way that it works in Europe.
Cheers
Al