[Nuke61]

QUADICON, on 30 April 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

Apple demands not only a higher subsidized cost, they also require upfront money based on how many devices you order that you think you can sell. Android or Windows Phone don't require such.

So I should feel sorry for Verizon, AT&T and the other carriers? I don't.

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Where is the 4G toting iPhone? We had 4G phones avail since early 2009. Here we are 3 years alter and iPhone is still 3G.

The 4G iPhone will come out in plenty of time for the masses. Currently LESS THAN 10% of Verizon users have a 4G smart phone.

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During Verizon Wireless' investor call for its Q1 2012 financial report, the carrier announced that it sold 3.2 million Apple iPhone smartphones and 2.1 million 4G LTE smartphones in the quarter. http://www.mobilebur...ones-in-q1-2012

BTW, Verizon sold 6.3 million smart phones in Q1 2012, so that means that just over 50% of the smartphones that they sold were iPhones.

[bankerdanny]

Apparently PCW wants to also be a secret weapon for MSWM because this article keeps getting recycled.

[Evildave]

QUADICON, on 30 April 2012 - 07:34 AM, said:

blah-blah-blah, hate, misquote, bawling...

Microsoft tax: Purchasing a new computer, it generally comes bundled with windows, whether you want it or not. How much did the manufacturer pay for that license? That's your Microsoft Tax. Especially if you bought a computer to stick Linux on it.

But the Microsoft Tax goes further. Why should the various levels of government use M$ Orifice on all of its machines, when free and VERY usable and VERY stable alternatives are available? You're LITERALLY being taxed to support Microsoft's monopoly exploitation. Especially when they get BURNED again and again with malware.

[PhillyPhan23]

Explain to me how promoting Windows Phone will give the carriers leverage against Apple? As long as consumers want iPhones, the carriers have two choices: a) offer the iPhone on Apple's terms or don't offer it at all. Choice b is only appealing if the carrier won't lose many customers to competing carriers who do offer the iPhone. Apple not only enjoys strong brand loyalty but consumers invested in Apple's ecosystem will be disinclined to switch. Because of this, I doubt that Windows Phone will impact Apple's demand as much as it will impact Android's, at least in the consumer market.

[Evildave]

I can only explain why a generally undifferentiated plastic rectangle with a piece of glass on top, just the same as all the other existing plastic rectangles with a piece of glass on top, won't generally have any traction in a market without MASSIVE capital injection of advertising and loss-leader investment.

People who've already invested in iOS, Android or RIM will remain invested. Microsoft might have bought RIM, weakened as it is, and had a chance at playing the 'for professionals' card with all of the blackberry invested companies, but decided to reinvent the wheel AGAIN (and soon, yet again with WP8), and thus they're NOW in the same boat as HP/webOS was, though probably with a slightly larger war chest for the initial couple of years of burning mountains of cash in a vain attempt to capture market share.

And when Microsoft pulls their routine exploitive BS of making 'old' software 'obsolete', there will be nothing keeping M$ Phone users from switching back to iOS/Android at the ends of their contracts, as much of their current paid-for software won't necessarily work on WP8, or perhaps WP9, and there eventually won't be WP7 phones anymore, even if Microsoft doesn't close the WP7 'app store'.

They've even sabotaged their own efforts by proclaiming WP8. Wanna get locked into 'last year's model' phone, or wait and see what WP8 looks like? Perhaps you'll get bored and buy another phone, instead. Not that most phone buyers aren't meatheads who'll buy whatever's on the shelf in front of them, or waved in their face by a salesman.

On the plus side, the 'missing things' in Android and iOS that Blackberry users keep whining about may finally manifest themselves, if Microsoft jumps in and tries to claim that they have all of that, too. Of course, every corporation that has ten thousand blackberries in the wild, with custom software running on them will not necessarily jump ship to Microsoft's platform, either, even if they match RIM's OS, feature for feature.

And no matter how tightly they 'integrate' with Office, if they do (as they have forever done) update Office/Phone in lockstep, so people with 'older' M$ Office can't sync with 'newer' M$ Phone, forcing a company to update BOTH investments, that SHOULD be unacceptable, but as we all know, government employees and corporate officers still take kickbacks.