Having been labelled as ‘unbelievably arrogant’ by European operators, rumour now has it that Apple have influenced AT&T, their iPhone carrier in the US, to downgrade the functionality of the ‘rival’ Blackberry 8820. The downgrade would limit the GPS functionality of the 8820 to the subscription only service TeleNav and with the iPhone boasting the Google Maps functionality the belief is the iPhone would appear ’superior’ and more appealing to the consumer.
As pointed out on several blogs the iPhone and 8820 are aimed at different market sectors, yet AT&T seem oblivious to this fact in promoting the iPhone over its other products.
Of course this is all rumour and there is no indication that Apple have asked AT&T to impose the downgrade of the 8820, but given Apple’s ‘arrogant’ labelling by some European carriers, it would be no surprise if this move was Apple instigated.
Personally, I’m neither a big Blackberry fan nor iPhone zealot, but the real concern here is that AT&T or Apple are forcing their will on RIM. Ultimately the loser in this is YOU not RIM, these kind of corporate moves directly affect the consumer through lack of choice and inflated prices. It is this kind of corporate greed that is repulsive and abhorrent in my opinion, the downside of capitalism no less - anyone else want to weigh in with their thoughts?
I hate bills, I hate receiving them, opening them and most of all paying them. Boy am I glad I didn’t get an iPhone then - check out this lass’s video on her first AT&T iPhone bill, bloody scary.
Now you know why your AT&T contract for the iPhone is so expensive, the cost of the packaging alone for all those bills must have cost a bomb. Way to go AT&T.
With no official announcement from HTC yet there seems to be plenty of rumours flying around about their latest product, the Kaiser or The Tilt as it’ll be known throughout AT&T stores in the US. I decided to track down all the specs (rumoured or confirmed) that I could find on this little sucker. The results are as follows
Slide and tilt QWERTY keyboard
Touch screen functionality a la HTC Touch
240 x 320 res display
3 Mp camera, a non-camera version will also be available as well as a dual-cam setup
Connectivity - 3G, GPRS, EDGE, video calls and WiFi
The 400 MHz chip along with 128 MB of RAM and 256 MB of ROM could run Windows Mobile 6
5 hours battery powered talk time
The Tilt will be hitting AT&T stores around the end of August/start of September with a rumoured price tag of $300.
With the launch date of the iPhone rapidly approaching here’s the latest report in the hype from DailyTech. If you’re living in the USA you’re going to have to stroll on down your your nearest AT&T supplier to get hold of one of Apple’s latest gifts to the world. The boys at AT&T have snaffled up exclsuive US distribution rights for the next five years. OUCH! Rivals Sprint and Verizon are gonna be smarting after that maneuver.
And smarting they are with Sprint getting dirty
In recent full-page newspaper ads, Sprint has lately been dumping on AT&T by name, taking swipes at the quality of its wireless network.
and so AT&T replies
In full-page ads, including one in USA TODAY, AT&T shot back that “15 times more people choose AT&T than Sprint.”
Now, now boys, wait until your father gets home. Anyway back to the main point, AT&T use the GSM mobile standard and so current Verizon and Sprint customers who want an iPhone will have to jump the fence to AT&T as Verizon and Sprint networks use CDMA technology and not GSM.
It’ll be interesting to see what the iPhone competition come up with over the next few months as I’m sure Verizon and Sprint will want to hit back with iPhone-destroyer product! Watch this space!
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Having been labelled as ‘unbelievably arrogant’ by European operators, rumour now has it that Apple have influenced AT&T, their iPhone carrier in the US, to downgrade the functionality of the ‘rival’ Blackberry 8820. The downgrade would limit the GPS functionality of the 8820 to the subscription only service TeleNav and with the iPhone boasting the Google Maps functionality the belief is the iPhone would appear ’superior’ and more appealing to the consumer.
