

Ask HN: chances Apple buys a cell carrier in 2011? - zoomzoom

Chance to vertically integrate and capital intensive. Seems to make some sense. Is it crazy?
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swombat
Apple's market is high-margin products where they can differentiate with
superior design, marketing, and so on. Not low-margin commodities where they
need to compete on price with everyone else.

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iwwr
It won't happen, the regulatory hurdles are too great. Also, maintaining
physical and geographically disparate infrastructure is expensive. An
infrastructure company is "bound to the land" and therefore more politically
(regulatory or otherwise) vulnerable.

Being AT&T is no picnic.

~~~
zoomzoom
But is there any company over the last 100 years you would rather have owned,
aside from maybe Standard Oil? I agree with the majority of threads that it
seems unlikely, for a lot of good reasons. Just might be reward for the risk
going forward.

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AlexMuir
Not a chance. The moment they did this all other networks would remove the
iPhone as soon as they possibly could.

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hugh3
Buy one in which country?

If they bought one in only one country then they don't get all that many
advantages. If they buy one in _every_ country, that's expensive and
ridiculously difficult.

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tomwans
it would be nice, though. You know there would only be two plans: $25 limited
and an unlimited plan (for who knows how much, $50? $60?)

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mattgratt
0%.

