It seems AT&T CEO, Randall Stephenson, had a change of heart and no longer feels Apple’s App Store is good for consumers.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]The App Store has been a huge success for Apple, helping it sell millions of iPhones. In turn, that has made millions of dollars for AT&T. However, just a week after losing the iPhone exclusivity, Stephenson says the current system is no good, according to the AP.
“You purchase an app for one operating system, and if you want it on another device or platform, you have to buy it again,” Stephenson said in a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress. “That’s not how our customers expect to experience this environment.”
Not surprisingly, Stephenson has a solution — the carriers should sell apps to customers directly. The apps would be based on HTML 5 and be sold through the Wholesale Applications Community, which counts AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile as members.
The carriers may find some success with this venture, but it’s hard to image that it could ever make a dent in Apple’s App Store business.
Let’s start with: the carriers (at least the USA-based ones) are evil.
I can only hope that they are soon reduced to being purely dumb pipes.
Okay, now I no longer think Verizon is more evil than AT&T. This is such a transparently hypocritical argument based on self-interest. It causes Apple to stand out even more in its focus on consumers rather than treating them as statistics in their P&L statements.
One day soon, Apple is going to set up a web page where I can instantly port my existing cell phone number from AT&T to Apple’s brand new FaceTime phone system; and even if that means I only have a WiFi “cell” phone for the next 3 or 4 years, it will also mean I’m saving thousands of dollars by doing so. WiFi hotspots are popping up everywhere, and soon there will be almost no need at all for the likes of AT&T – for most people, anyway. If Stephenson doesn’t pull his head out of his butt real soon – if it’s not already too late for them – AT&T, like Microsoft is on a one-way-hi-speed train to oblivion. And they aren’t even looking out the window.
I’m going to be first in line to sign up for my new FaceTime phone number.
The current system works great. Apps I bought for my iPhone 3G now work great on my iPhone 4 and my ipad. Those same apps will also work great on my next iPhone and iPad. Plus, I get to use them on my wife’s iPhone and iPad. Great customer experience.
They have to be loosing customers in droves.
Thanks but no thanks, AT&T. Please focus on making your dumb pipe less leaky and clogged.
PS love that it is called ‘WAC’. As in “that useless carrier is totally WAC”
[Whitney Houston: “Crack is WAC”]
If only.
It’s the same here in Germany, with one exception; Telefonica O2.
From what I have read they have made the biggest gains in terms of subscriber numbers when they got the iPhone 4.
And guess what they did? They concentrated on offering plans that people had actual use for.
Yes, perhaps Randall Stephenson has failed to notice that consumers actually like Apple, but hate AT&T with a white-hot passion.
While AT&T was printing their own money with the exclusive iPhone contract, they loved the App Store. Now that it’s not all theirs to skim the cream from, the CEO is concerned about how “customers expect to experience this environment.” This would resonate more if he’d had this revelation in 2007. Instead, it just comes across as desperate and self-serving. It makes me hate the company, and I don’t even patronize them.
He must’ve drunk to much Google Juice, because this whole way of talking kinda reminds me of the Google’s buzzword I cannot remember for some reason right now.
Yeah… As someone who’s worked with carriers for app development, all I can say is that they had their chance to build quality and blew it to high hell. Why go through that nonsense again?
I’m so very glad Stephenson’s looking out for my interests as a consumer. Do boards of directors actually reward this sort of useless posturing?
Wow, that actually looks like a lot of fun
http://www.privacy-online.au.tc
What happens when I buy an app from AT&T and switch to Verizon. Will I have to repurchase it again? Hypocrite.
Morons and hypocrites. How is that any different from charging me an early cancellation fee and full price for a new phone on the same AT&T carrier service? You shouldn’t have to pay twice for an app on a different platform? Man I cannot wait for AT&T to go away.
Egads! If the software vetted and sold presently by AT&T, Verizon. Sprint, and T-mobile is any indication, we’re in for End Times.
Not to mention that “this environment” is Apple’s ecosystem. Not AT&Ts.
No wonder AT&T network is a farce, because its CEO is equally farcical! Checkout ATT response to my rant about its network in DC http://bit.ly/euX3jt (on twitter)
That dude is a hypocrite.