When you think about it, the lock with AT&T is a very big gamble for Apple. The industrial design of their phone, a touch screen, can be easily cloned. The UI, on the other hand, is their advantage. This reminds me alot of 1991, when Apple had the far superior UI (OS), but locked it to their hardware. With the rise of PC clones in both quality and power in the early 90s and the pitiful OS by Microsoft by comparison, it was obvious to me that if Apple were to sell their OS for any computer, they would have become the dominant OS. A friend of mine was a huge Apple fan at the time, and I asked "why not sell the OS separately?" He said you couldn't because of the "magic" of the hardware that somehow transcended their sw. Bad answer.
So here we are again, Apple with an amazing UI (OS), but with easily cloned hardware. If AT&T is not able to get their speed up in the next year or two, and the iphone is cloned with a reasonable UI on a carrier such as Verizon, Apple could actually loose their tremendous advantage and end up again with their 7% or so of the market.
I think Iphone's future in many ways is now dependent on AT&T. If AT&T can come through fast enough, AT&T will then be made irrelevant, or AT&T will lumber along at their normal pace and the Iphone will be passed by clones with better bandwidth - this will be an interesting show.
The good news for us, no matter what: Apple again has made something people really want, and with the rise of webapps, businesses need. The big question: will others now jibe and take Apple's wind away because of the AT&T anchor?
So here we are again, Apple with an amazing UI (OS), but with easily cloned hardware. If AT&T is not able to get their speed up in the next year or two, and the iphone is cloned with a reasonable UI on a carrier such as Verizon, Apple could actually loose their tremendous advantage and end up again with their 7% or so of the market.
I think Iphone's future in many ways is now dependent on AT&T. If AT&T can come through fast enough, AT&T will then be made irrelevant, or AT&T will lumber along at their normal pace and the Iphone will be passed by clones with better bandwidth - this will be an interesting show.
The good news for us, no matter what: Apple again has made something people really want, and with the rise of webapps, businesses need. The big question: will others now jibe and take Apple's wind away because of the AT&T anchor?