Alex Watson
It’s quite common for these columns to end up being about Google and Apple – no surprise, there, as they’re the two richest, most important and successful tech companies in the world. More often than not, they’re also two organisations that are diametrically opposed in terms of approach and philosophy, and, of course, they do compete directly against each other in a number of areas.
However, contrary to many an SEO-friendly blog post header, Apple and Google’s rivalry isn’t one of the winner-takes-all variety. It’s not quite Lennon and McCartney, either, but neither company is aiming for the total destruction of the other. Apple’s hardware contributes plenty of traffic to Google’s systems, and many people buy Apple’s hardware, I suspect, precisely because it does work so well with Google.
Apple’s real rivals are infinitely more obvious than those who really like to give the folks in Cupertino a good shoeing. So, this rival? It’s not Google. It’s not Microsoft. It’s not a super-cool web company with a name that has a less-than-faithful relationship to the rules of grammar and spelling.
It’s the mobile phone networks.
Back in 2007, Apple used the success of the iPod – and anticipated success of the iPhone – to negotiate a very good deal with AT&T. The company changed its network to enable Visual Voicemail to work and agreed iPhone subscribers could use all the mobile data they wanted. While they could sell the handset, Apple exercised its usual control freakery over the process, and insisted that it, too, would also sell the iPhone online and through its stores. Finally, AT&T wasn’t allowed to touch the software. It couldn’t install its own apps, it couldn’t change the browser and Apple would handle all the updates.
At the time, none of this seemed like a bad deal. The iPhone was only 2G, so it couldn’t pull down much in the way of mobile data. Of course, Apple had to be allowed to sell the phones – and they would still be running on AT&T – and who was really interested in software for phones, anyway?
It didn’t seem like a bad deal on launch day, either, as people queued up for a new phone. Better than that, they queued to pay $600 (about £379) for a phone, and on high-value contracts. Most were new customers to AT&T, too.
It didn’t seem like a bad deal at all, not for the first or even second year. Three years later, however, and the mobile phone networks aren’t so sure. Apple soon introduced a 3G iPhone, and those unlimited data plans started to become very costly, especially as, once armed with a decent web browser and the ability to download games, software, podcasts and YouTube videos anywhere, people started gorging on mobile data. Cue the networks needing to spend billions and billions of dollars on expensive 3G infrastructure.
Then it turned out that software for phones was, to put it mildly, a bit of a big deal – and a deal in which no iPhone network plays any part. They can offer an app, but anyone with a $99 (about £62.60) dev account can do that. They can’t sign a lucrative partnership with a third party and bundle that app with all of their phones, and then stop the users deleting it. They can’t get access to any data about their users and sell that to third parties. They can serve the downloads of software and supply the apps with data, but they can’t take a cut of the money the users are spending on them – nope, they get to stand like orphans at the window of Scrooge’s banquet, looking on in hope, salivating.
They can only watch as Apple CEO Steve Jobs tells people that one of the selling points of the new iPod touch is that it’s like a phone, only without the contract, as if that’s somehow a good and desirable thing. Then there’s FaceTime, which is a way to call your friends without even needing their phone number.
The future Jobs has in mind for the mobile phone networks is one in which they are, to reuse a memorable phrase, just dumb pipes for when there’s no wifi. For Apple – and let’s be honest, for most iPhone users – the only things that matter about a mobile phone network are its 3G coverage and price. The network isn’t important or interesting – it’s just a supplier of a utility, like the power or water company.
The mobile phone networks don’t see themselves as the next British Gas, doing the unglamorous spade work. They think they’re real, proper technology companies with a vital role to play. They used to help design the phones (ex Motorola execs blamed the networks in the company’s decline, saying their power of veto was what kept the company churning out Razr derivatives for years). They want to design software. They want to matter.
With Android, they have a chance at that – because it’s open. They can take Google’s OS and change it to suit their purposes. Remember Google’s desire to sell the Nexus One direct and have customers simply chose a network as a background service provider, ideally contract free? It didn’t really pan out like that. TechCrunch published an excellent post (techcrunch.com/2010/09/10/google-nexus-one) examining just how hard the mobile phone networks tried to stop Google’s dream coming true – and, essentially, Google caved in, as it needed their support to give Android momentum.
In the US, we’ve seen Samsung Android phones with different names depending on the network, and with apps that can’t be deleted. It’s true that you can’t delete the calculator or stock ticker App from the iPhone, but these are apps designed by Apple with a specific and useful function in mind. Neither do they take up a lot of space. Compare that with the Android-powered Motorola Droid X, which came with a demo of Blockbuster’s video app, a demo of an EA game and a call ID utility called City ID, which works well for two weeks, but then requires you to pay $2 (about £1.26) a month for it. Now, call me a cynic, but perhaps – just perhaps – there’s a chance a bit of money changed hands to get these apps on the phone.
Then there’s the fishy happenings around the Skype for Android app: it’s only available via Android phones running on Verizon. There’s Verizon’s V Cast Media Manger software, which is a lot like iTunes for Android phones (Google provides nothing in the way of PC-to-phone sync software for media files), and, coming soon, the V Cast App Store. Verizon is, as I write this, about to host its own developer conference. All of these actions are far more befitting of a company like Apple, not British Gas.
This is all before we get to the thorny issue of Android updates – Google might be pumping them out at a rapid rate, but round the world, the phone networks are slow to roll them out. Perhaps they see little value in helping out customers already signed on to lengthy contracts. Finding a phone running the latest version of Android, 2.2. (aka Froyo) is tricky – there’s still plenty of phones, even pricey high-end ones, being sold running Android 2, or even 1.6. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft copes with the networks, and whether it ends up taking Google’s supine approach or following Apple’s lead.
So far, it’s been widely assumed that Apple is behind the iPhone’s US exclusivity to AT&T, but you have to wonder if Verizon is perhaps playing a part in terms of being reluctant to sign up to being a dumb pipe. It’s unlikely that the networks will be able to roll back the framework of the iPhone deal that Apple established in 2007, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
Next time an iPhone detractor tells you that Android being open is a good thing, you might want to ask them who it’s a good thing for – the customer or the network.
