Is Apple abandoning wireless carrier exclusivity?
With multiple wireless carrier deals already in France and a few other countries, and given the ongoing negotiations with a second carrier in China, Apple seems to be rethinking iPhone exclusivity.
There appears to be a trend afoot regarding Apple’s relationships with wireless service providers, and it is not a trend that will make AT&T sleep better at night. In a rather stealthy fashion, without making much of a splash, Apple has ended exclusive iPhone deals with wireless service providers in France and India. Now, after having signed a rather large deal with China Unicom to bring the iPhone to China, they are still negotiating with China Mobile, a carrier that is even a better demographics fit for the iPhone and has more users to boot.
This may reflect a change in philosophy within Apple, according to The Motley Foole. Historically, Apple has allied itself with a high-end carrier in any country in which the iPhone was introduced, and has granted that carrier an exclusive deal for some period of time. That sort of arrangement was seen by Apple as more controllable and more in tune with Apple’s own philosophy of quality and exclusivity. That has obviously changed in markets like India and France. Their pursuit of a second iPhone franchise in China would give all appearances of making this new non-exclusive sort of arrangement the new norm.
Given the problems that AT&T is having with service and coverage issues, the United States market would appear to be a prime candidate for widening the available wireless carrier choices for consumers. Apple is already known to be in discussions with Verizon, a carrier with much better service and technical credentials than AT&T, and it would seem that switching to Verizon, or adding them as a second carrier would be a no-brainer for Apple. By the same token, given the recent alliances in other countries with carriers who are not the market leaders, perhaps we should begin to think of Sprint and T-Mobile as part of the possible iPhone mix.
Given how quickly Apple churned out a custom iPhone for China Unicom, we may be looking into a future of more iPhone models with more variety in features and technology, as well as an era in which carrier exclusivity is a thing of the past. A range of models for Verizon, perhaps, with a couple of low-end iPhones for T-Mobile, perhaps. It is almost a certainly that having multiple iPhone models available through multiple carriers would increase overall sales in a given country. That logically leads to increased revenues and better market share, both of which are rather critical goals.
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