Posts tagged iphone
Huh. Lou Reed has an iPhone app. And bad vision. (iTunes Link)
Why doesn’t AT&T just offer a VOIP solution?
Similar to the way T-Mobile routes calls over wifi for a group of their phones. AT&T could create an app, get it featured, charge $6 a month for unlimited voice-over-wifi.
Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t see a downside to this; the only argument against T-Mobile’s WiFi calling is that it requires a WiFi capable phone. Only a few were available at launch two years ago, but now a Blackberry has just been added to the mix.
But AT&T doesn’t have that problem. It has the iPhone. Hell, I already pay $3 a month to use Skype over WiFi since my apartment is a dead zone. To me, a WiFi VOIP solution would create three big wins for AT&T:
- It would clear up their bandwidth. VOIP would route a percentage of calls through Comcast or other internet providers, lighting the load on AT&T’s 3G network.
- It would raise ARPU among iPhone users. I would pay $6 a month for the WiFi VOIP that mapped to my phone number and allowed people to call me at home. Many others in cities, where coverage is most problematic, would as well.
- It would retain customers. This is the big one: my one gripe with the iPhone is reception. Let me connect to my networks and even Starbucks and the problem goes away. Verizon’s map would cease to entice me and I’d remain loyal to AT&T.
Beyond reception, consumers would benefit from unlimited WiFi minutes. It would be a win-win. The only real excuse I can imagine for AT&T not embracing this is Apple blocking the way.
Thoughts? I’m stumped.
“ I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate…”
Historic Earth, an iPhone App that lets you overlay historic maps, letting you see where you are in space and time.
Pity there’s no San Francisco coverage yet. (Via emergence studios)
The teaser for Motorola’s new Droid takes aim at the iPhone. It’s not going to beat the iPhone, but I do think this is the death-knell for Windows Mobile and whatever Project Pink produces––if they produce.
First the positive: based on more recent leaks, this phone does look pretty sharp. And I like the new direction Moto’s been taking for the last year or so: they cut the fat, reduced their in-house OSes from seven to one, and embraced Android. Even better, they didn’t just embrace Android for the buzzword and slap something together and throw it out the door. No, they actually conducted R&D. How novel!
This teaser revives a few of pet peeves though, mainly the idea that anyone outside of the Slashdot crowd cares about multiple apps or open development. Plus, find me a consumer on the street who can tell you the difference between a widget and an application and I’ll give you a cookie. In a teaser, they’re fine, especially since the post-Matrix visuals betray their XBox 360 target audience. But if these nerd-platitudes make it to prime time, it’ll be a mistake.
But the XBox audience is the right one to build upon. Microsoft can’t ship a phone to leverage that audience, so it’s up for grabs. And right now, Moto looks to have it dead in its sights.
HP is porting their calculators to the iPhone. Yet another example of how the iPhone is white-label hardware.
There’s a bit of irony here as well. To get the initial money to start Apple, both Steves sold their most prized possessions. Jobs sold his VW microbus and Woz sold his HP scientific calculator. 33 years later and he’s right back where he started.
