More Proof Of Why AT&T Needs To Keep That iPhone Exclusivity

techcrunch.com

7 points·transburgh··3 comments

For the free market beacon the US projects, it has one of the least competitive mobile markets in the entire world. How are contracts such as Apple-AT&T not against consumer choice? Why do I have to have a ridiculously priced contract with AT&T to use this model of a phone?

Basically, the current iphone model in the US tells me to either go on ebay to get an iphone or buy it in another country. Why?

This has absolutely nothing to do with the free market. The free market means that people interact freely, if you choose not accept the terms apple and att are offering -- then you don't accept. I believe you can purchase the phone from apple or att directly but at the non-subsidized price which is quite high.

I might have guessed it based on the source, but to save you some time: this really wasn't worth reading.

It's kind of cool to see an inside memo like that, but the content is rather "meh."

TC summarizes it:

>The iPhone 3GS’s launch gave AT&T its best sales day at its retail stores — ever, its second largest traffic day at retails stores, the most transactions it has ever processed in a day, the most orders through att.com in a single day ever and the biggest features sales day at att.com ever. Oh, and it led to the most upgrade eligibility checks ever, which is not surprising at all

Who cares? Breaking records for one day doesn't really mean much. Even in a small company, (or perhaps especially so? -- say so if you think that's the case) breaking /yearly/ records doesn't mean much.

My point is that there really isn't much news here. iPhone 3GS brought us record breaking sales for one day. We sent more texts than ever the day Michael Jackson died. Meh.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com