

Tim Bray: Year-end View of the Mobile Market - bensummers
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/12/28/Mobile-Market

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Zak
_An unencumbered high-end handset at around $500 is cheaper than the same
device at $199 with a contract. I wonder if someone will notice this and offer
conventional financing packages like you can get for fridges and TVs._

T-mobile appears to be doing exactly that. You can get a contract with a
subsidy, you can get financing on the phone and cheaper monthly service, or
you can buy the phone outright and get cheaper monthly service.

~~~
sandipc
unfortunately, AFAIK, T-Mobile is the only major US carrier to offer such no-
contract/unsubsidized discounts

~~~
cosmicray
I would hope, and hope is a strong word, that having multiple carriers (plus
MVNOs) on the interchangeable LTE bands will encourage some competition that
is sorely lacking due to incompatible frequency allocations.

Every spot in the US will be covered by 4 (5 is they ever find a buyer for the
D block) licenses. In some locations, one carrier already has 2 of the
licenses (e.g. VZW). I still see room for competitive behavior.

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MrScruff
_... there’s nothing fundamental in Android that would get in the way of a
industrial-design and user-experience rock-star team, whether at Google or one
of the handset makers, testing the hypothesis that these things are central to
Apple’s success.

Which is to say, it would be sort of surprising, but not that much, if this
time next year, dirt-cheap iPhones were competing against Androids that push
the user-experience lever farther than Apple or anyone else ever has._

I keep hearing this argument that Google simply has to assemble a crack team
of UI experts and they'll inevitably match or surpass Apple's offerings.

Presumably Apple will equally at some point assemble a search rock-star team
and push the search level farther than Google or anyone else ever has.

~~~
trotsky
I agree, there are obviously elements of the iPhone OS user experience that no
other high tech company has a chance of ever matching.

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mariusmg
WP7 will become a major player in 2011.

