iPhone Remains Locked to AT&T :: The Future of the Internet

iPhone Remains Locked to AT&T

July 11th, 2008 | by bballou | Published in Future of the Internet | 2 Comments

The new iPhone was released today at AT&T and Apple stores around the country. For people who missed the phone the first time around, or who didn’t want to pay $599 and a two-year contract, or who just really want a GPS system, this may be important. But for developers, the new iPhone won’t change much. As JZ posted, coders will have to wait up to six months to get their programs vetted by Apple. This sort of lock-down hurts innovators and hurts consumers.

But it isn’t the only kind of lock-down Apple is pushing. Like the original one, this new iPhone will remain tethered to the AT&T network. Customers can buy a phone for $199-$299 so long as they sign up for a 2-year contract, or they can pay up to $699 upfront with no such requirement. But either way, users cannot bring the iPhone to a new carrier without hacking it. (Which raises the question: why would anyone pay $699 for a phone without a contract? That’s an awful lot of money for an iPod Touch with a camera.)

This sort of locking hurts consumers where AT&T has no network, or where the network is unreliable. It also hurts consumers who want to shop for different coverage plans, who want to mix-and-match phone and data services (maybe get AT&T’s 3G data service, but Verizon’s voice service), or who want to use different contracts when they travel abroad.

And it hurts innovation as well. After all, if you’re a potential developer, would you invest your time coding an application that only works on one network? And would you invest time in an application that can be blocked by AT&T at any time? You might, but in general these sorts of controls make innovation on the iPhone less attractive and less likely.

So why does Apple do it then? Because it has no interest in helping independent innovators. They’ve locked the code and locked the phone to the network so that they can better monetize any future applications developers might produce (not to mention that this lock down fits quite nicely with AT&T’s own business plan). The result is that Apple and AT&T gained almost complete control over the iPhone, but at the cost of innovation.

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Arno says:

July 14th, 2008 at 11:06 pm (#)

The iphone is great for apple, but a disaster for at&t.
http://www.geldpress.com/2008/07/att-lose-money-iphone/
Benlog » Blame the Device or the Carrier? says:

July 24th, 2008 at 9:26 pm (#)

[...] Take the launch of the latest iPhone “3G”. Zittrain and friends make a compelling case about how Apple is monetizing iPhone applications and benefits from locking users into the [...]

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