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Iphone is the Paris Hilton of cellular

Strand says handset is operators' worst friend
Monday, 22 December 2008, 11:20

TELECOMS ANALYST Strand Consult has described Apple's Ithingey as the Paris Hilton of mobile phones. A seemingly beautiful product but actually no good to the operators partnered with Apple.

The most damning part of the company's report says that, "Our research shows that there is not one single Apple partner in the world [among the mobile operators] that has increased its overall turnover, profit and market share thanks to the Iphone."

Worse still, Strand claims that a number of operators have issued profit warnings related to their Iphone ventures. The central theme from Strand is that the Ithingey burns up valuable mobile broadband.

Most Ithingey users choose not to view the websites in XHTML which is optimised for low bandwidth and mobile phone-sized screens.

So an Ithingey user browsing a typical news site consumes around one megabyte of data. The mobile version of the same page will often be less than 100 Kb.

Strand also maintains that there is a huge market for unlocked Iphone's. These handsets most often end up on non-Apple partner networks. Those operators benefit from offering low voice and data rates to unlocked ithingeys.

The best bit, the INQ thinks, is that Strand says it's all journalists' fault. The Ithingey has apparently received too much press attention, "probably due to an uncritical press that have allowed themselves to be seduced by Apple's unique PR machine."

So it's us, not the operators themselves, who've been seduced?

Nice work if you can get it, then. µ

L'Inq
Strand

 

 

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Comments
so...

Beauty but dumb :))

posted by : Ed, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
Incorrect Fact Spotted

Except Xhtml is nothing to with Mobile.

Were you thinking WML...?

posted by : Noel, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
Are you kidding?

It's the largest-selling handset in the States & you're asserting that AT&T hasn't increased market share because of it? You need to hire a better fact-checker. Their wireless revenue was up 15% year-over-year, and wireless data services up over 50% from the previous year.

posted by : Jeff, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
I'm confused?

The iPhone has not been the revenue earner expected because 'The central theme from Strand is that the Ithingey burns up valuable mobile broadband.', but then later on he goes on to say:-

'Strand also maintains that there is a huge market for unlocked Iphone's. These handsets most often end up on non-Apple partner networks. Those operators benefit from offering low voice and data rates to unlocked ithingeys.'

Now given that the first gen iPhones weren't subsidised, that surely doesn't make a whole lot of sense?

posted by : Mr Rooster, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
"unlocked Iphone's"

Can I have a pound of potato's, half a pound of onion's, four orange's and three grocer's apostrophe's along with my unlocked Iphone's, please?

*smackwrist*

posted by : DaveK, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
Bandwidth Whore

My family has 4 iThingies and we use them quite prolifically. I am very proud to be a bandwidth whore and couldn't care less what anyone else thinks.

Why is it that every time I read one of these articles it smells like jealousy?

posted by : Sean, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
Excuse me, the apostrophes..

..what's going on? Surely Tony D. was almost literate in the past, hasn't got Gitwizard disease from Farrell, has he? Would be a shame.

posted by : Karma Police, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
really jeff?

@ jeff

I find it that most apple product users seems to have an "I am mightier than thou" and thats why they are so "passionate" about their purchase and that's why they feel that others are jealous of them.

my girlfriend just got an iPhone and all of a sudden she thinks I'm jealous of her. jealous of her? really? if anything I'm laughing at her: she has to buy ringtones twice! lol, if she already bought a song from iTunes she can't just go and use it as a ringtone. the keyboard only shows 1 word candidate, her browser doesn't even word wrap! what? she hadn't gotten used to all the scrolling yet. there are so my limitations I could talk about but it would be too lengthy.

this is the conclusion I came up with: windows mobile is more of a tuner's car and the iPhone is more or an aristocratic benz with no tuning options. the only thing the iPhone got going for it (in my eyes) is the sleek hardware and the window transitions/animations, feature wise it really sucks.

on to the article:
it's really not a valid point since a lot of browsers now-a-days don't use the mobile versions of sites to display the page. I use opera mobile 9 and set it to view in desktop mode.
according to the article, technically all smart phones with good web browsers gives the mobile companies no return in profits and not just the iPhone.
well, I don't know how my mobile operator profits go but I use 5GB on average monthly, I pay I good money for it so I'm gonna use it the way that is best for me.

posted by : lenard, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
no edit button

arrg!!

my above post is @ sean not jeff.

posted by : lenard, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
So not jealous

I noticed the same thing as lenard... it's an effect with Appleheads in general, but the iPhone crowd has it the worst.

I'm far from jealous of iPhone users. Why would I be? If I wanted one, I'd buy one. I've used them, toyed with them, etc., and the bottom line is that there's nothing compelling there (aside from being pretty). It sucks as a phone -- and I hate being on the other end of an iPhone call even more -- and does less, and does it worse, than the nearly 10 year old Zaurus I use daily. Oh, and it's insanely expensive for what it does (but it's made by Apple, so that's a given.)

So why would I be jealous? When I see iPhone users, I actually pity them a little bit.

posted by : zal42, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
Not Jealous

Two commenters were compelled to write that they were not, repeat, not jealous of iPhone users.

Methinks they doth protest too much.

posted by : Al, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
This is news?

Hey Tony, this was news two weeks ago.

And what do people always fuss about Apple, the gadget fashion company?

They go about their business as if they were in fashion. Their gadgets are developed for a saison, presented by Mr. Jobs - their Supermodel - himself. Buy it now, and the creases will go away all by themselves - honest.
And if the competition has something in the works, well the next version will be far better.

Of course there is some substance to the things Apple flogs - Mr. Jobs is certainly one of the best product managers out there.

But the customers fall for the elegance plus, there are a lot in the mainstream media.

posted by : keese, 22 December 2008 Complain about this comment
Jealous... Are you kidding!? My ideal xPhone

Tell me where iPhone is capable of all this.

- Wide VGA 800x480 or 640x480 VGA screen min (like in SonyEricson Xperia but it has too small Japaneeze or woman oriented hand)

- 3.5-4" screen, but 3.5 min

- 30fps video at VGA resolution

- Work as a modem

- and as a router for Xbox, laptop and camera's own browser simultaneously

- Dual processor, 600-800 MHz clock min, good FP-coprocessor, just
to not lag with the simplest multitasking (including firewall)

- Skype capable

- Opera, IE, and FFox by my choise, not Steves (I do not hate Steve Jobs, he is a genius)

- All Windows software capable, not windows mobile cr#$

- Flash

- Java

- Has 1024-by-768 XGA output for projectors (to make presentations from a cell from craddle) or XGA glasses

- Allows external USB/bluetooth keyboard and mouse

- Front camera for videoconferencing

- Decent quality autofocus still camera wih flash at least like Sony ultrathin cameras have. People do not realize that ALL cameras in cell phones have $5 BoM cost, unusable, and are worse than in any $20 still camera circa year 2000

- SD or miniSD

- GPS usable for driving

- Play DIVX movies ripped for PC

- Stereo Bluetooth

- Wi-fi N

- and as a bonus - powerful enough cell version of NVIDIA/ATI video card, 512MB min, when on external power. As a superbonus - capable of playing WoW with at least 15fps (my ancient 2002 1 GHz Pentium III, 32MB videocard Dell laptop can do that on low settings due to small RAM, now they can install 512MB DDR2 RAM with $3 more in BoM. Or better DDR3 or DDR4)

posted by : Slava, 23 December 2008 Complain about this comment
AT&T= broke the (U.S.) law

...and the people who use them are as ignorant as Paris too. So quickly people forget about AT&T's illegal spy room in San Francisco. Support AT&T, support George Bush and his trashing of the U.S. Constitution. Nick Farrel gets a pass of course since the Inq. is UK based.

posted by : jeff e, 23 December 2008 Complain about this comment
@Slava

Where is this uber phone you describe, what is it and how much? It sounds like a gaming laptop, with video camera squeezed into a mobile phone case, is it? And you make it sound cheap too.
HTC Touch HD - Everything the iPhone could have been, www.htc.com.


The Inq, I'm adding 2 lines of spaces and 1 return to try to make paragraphs, fix this ASAP please.

posted by : interested_party, 24 December 2008 Complain about this comment
That's not the point...

The carriers might be losing money on the things but Apple isn't. They got suckered...

posted by : Martin, 25 December 2008 Complain about this comment
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