iPhone’s Achilles heel
I’ve owned every version of iPhone. Was in line on launch day, during a hot North Carolina summer day.
The iPhone is one of the greatest phones every designed, minor flaws and all.
My iPhone lays deactivated and turned off tonight.
Why?
Despite the new hotness of Verizon, carrier lock-in forced me to leave. After years of pitiful AT&T service, I tried Verizon, the supposed savior of the iPhone and after a few months found it to be worse than AT&T.
Sure, I could make and receive calls, but only outside my home. Data speed here in Emeryville and around the Bay Area ranges from ok to useless.
Verizon proposed I pay an additional $249 for a booster in my home. If I lived in a huge building or in a canyon I would understand. But I live in Emeryville, center the Bay Area, completely flat with nothing obstructing my signal.
This brings me to the iPhone’s Achilles heal - its the carrier.
The carrier will always taint the perfect product experience Apple strives for.
The iPhone loses its luster when its on a crappy network.
While people bitched about dropped calls on AT&T, the dominant use of the iPhone is data - something Verizon sucks at.
In contrast, my T-Mobile Nexus S gets great signal and the data speed stomps Verizon and AT&T in my city. The problem, you can’t use an existing iPhone on the T-Mobile network or buy one for it.
Apple has a few options to improve this situation.
First, become a carrier. Either launch a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) or leverage their massive market cap to acquire a carrier.
I don’t thin Apple will acquire a carrier, they would spend too much time and money revamping the acquired company to operator at Apple speed. But they might pull off something like Virgin did with Virgin Mobile.
Second, ship a quad band, dual GSM/CDMA phone. This would allow customers to take their iPhone to any carrier in their area that provides good service.
The latter option is the obvious choice, Apple is an engineering company foremost. They could design such a phone and being unencumbered with exclusivity to any carriers, they could go rogue with an unlocked phone.
That said, Apple has always tried to be a one stop shop for a consumer’s computing needs.
If they launched an MVNO, using their famous negotiating skills to drive low rates, they could provide everything out of the box with Apple’s famous customer experience.
Apple’s next evolution should remove the requirement that “their” customers deal with another company in order to use “their” products.
It would change the game at a time when Google, HTC, Samsung and Motorola are just getting into the one Apple started.
