Steve, Please Buy Us A Carrier

You could make roughly the same points about the iTunes / record label relationship. If it were enough of a strategic advantage it might happen. I wouldn't cross your fingers though.

Also, Apple stands to gain even more dominance at the expense of carriers should next-gen wifi (802.22) ever take hold and make GSM data plans obsolete.

It depends on how it works out, but I could see a model in the near future where the infrastructure and selling the service are split up. There's already a bunch of MVNOs (Mobile virtual network operators), and that will only grow. There will be a point where network operators are really just doing that: operating the network, not selling you minutes. That would allow network operators to focus on their core competence (or what should be their core competence), operating a good, reliable network. All too often now, the telecom industry feels like bait and switch or an extortion scheme...

On an aside note, there's a group of students here in the Netherlands that want to do that: setup a MVNO as a coop or a non-profit, that will essentially give you SIP/data of your calls, instead of handling routing from A-Z. See http://limesco.org/wordpress/, though most of it is in Dutch.

And getting back to Apple: an iPhone MVNO could work well. On the other hand, Apple has rules about selling iPhones on networks that make Apple like a carrier already: iPhone data has to be 2x as fast as any other comparable plan, etc. Apple has the carriers in their grip...

Those problems are opportunities if one knows how to solve them, and Apple might.

- Apple knows how to pull strings at FCC (e.g. appearance of Apple's products of FCC's website seems coordinated with official announcements). Apple isn't scared of patent battles and is well armed in this field. They can make their own hardware and work with 3rd party vendors.

- Apple keeps high margins on their computers, while PC manufacturers are in the race to the bottom. Perhaps a "premium" carrier could pull that off too? (especially if they could do more innovations like visual voicemail).

These sound like reasons for Apple not to do retail stores. :)

In fact, I think Apple has lots of room to win in these areas. From TFA, think how much waste there is in cell implementations for legacy/interop-- not to mention carrier overhead-- that could be eliminated if Apple made every single device on the network?

Apple is full-stack from today's perspective. What if tomorrow's "stack" includes the towers and the complete customer billing relationship? People might say this was an obvious step along the road to e-wallet phones.

I agree this feels a little far fetched. But so did AAPL becoming the world's largest company, and switch to x86, before the fact... :)

There are plenty of reasons Apple won't buy a carrier (I think namely because it wouldn't be approved without concessions that Steve Jobs would never live with), but money isn't one of them. Interest rates are very near zero and Apple isn't exactly a credit risk. Not to mention Apple's stock value...

Note also that much of that cash pile is overseas already, and might have tax implications if it is used domestically.

It is a slightly whimisical what if? blog post. I didn't find it all that misleading or confusing.

Given the length of time it takes to put up new towers, it is probably that the money they spent is finally showing some results. In ND they are in the middle of a transition from a local carrier they bought to themselves. It did not go smooth (total loss of network for a period and double billing customers), but the coverage is now getting better.

They fixed their reception just in time to lie about why they want to buy T-Mobile to continue screwing US consumers.

In far west Houston AT&T is an abomination. I quite literally drop 1-4 calls daily, especially around 3-8pm. In my house I'm usually at 1 bar or "searching" most of the time. I have complained and their excuse is that the large masterplanned community that dominates the area won't let them put up more towers. I am skeptical of this. Its a big neighborhood but they aren't that big.

I try to use mark the spot religiously but dunno if it loses it's impact when I'm marking it daily

Because they collaborated with then-Cingular to do Visual Voicemail. Also the thinking then was that they could earn a kickback from the carrier for exclusivity.

The carriers probably have many ways of making phone manufacturers miserable if they choose to do so.

The original iPhone wasn't carrier subsidized - you could walk into the store and buy one, without a contract. You'd set up the contract when you got home, through iTunes.

It was locked to Cingular/AT&T, but that was, as the other commenter said, more of a Visual VM thing than anything else.

I'm thinking this started because Apple wanted to change the way phones were sold, but changed because selling a $599 (or $399 after the price drop) phone wasn't tenable in the US market.

Experience in market and a totally different type of phone are reasons. I am pretty sure some features required carrier support (i.e. Visual Voicemail). The initial data plans were also a bit different than a traditional offering. The iPhone was not a sure bet even with the backing of a carrier.

I honestly doubt that would make things any better. The carriers are terrified of becoming dumb pipes between you and your content. Apple's latest strategy is to wedge itself in the middle as a distributor (iTunes, iBooks).

Considering Apple's control obsession, a telecom buyout is more likely to make things even worse. Wireless spectrum is a public good, what we need is a company that has zero interest vested in the bits going down the pipe.

I am with you. I don't see how you could call it a dumb phone at that point.

It is still a foolish idea. To keep costs down, you would probably use the same chip as your other iPhone / iPod Touch or the previous generation chip. You might have less flash, but the commodity chips have increased in size. The biggest cost savings would be to use the original iPhone LCD resolution. No significant cost savings for Apple comes from just having a browser phone. Plus, it would annoy app developers, increase support costs, and cost Apple their 30% cut. I see it as a no go.