Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
We are but a scant few weeks into the new year, and yet the deluge of news released so far is enough to last through at late summer. (Hopefully all the snow blanketing the country does not do the same.)
This should not be a huge surprise as the year typically kicks off with a splash thanks to the Consumer Electronics Show, which this year was impressively wireless heavy. However, between that early January event and the annual Mobile World Congress event held across the pond in mid-February, we are typically allowed at least a chance to catch our breaths.
Not this year.
Soon after CES, Verizon Wireless answered the prayers of millions of current iPhone owners by announcing it would be offering Apple Inc.’s iPhone. That in of itself would have been newsworthy enough to last at least through MWC and possibly through June when Apple typically unveils its latest iPhone model.
But, the past five days have again vomited a plethora of news items that – and I can’t believe I am saying this – could makes next week’s MWC event seem tame. (Of course, as I am not attending this year’s MWC in person, I can sit from afar and avoid the on-site insanity.)
As my simple mind is not advanced enough to simply tackle any single event that stood out this past week, I have decided to take the easy way out and included a brief “gut” reaction summary to each event.
–First, Sprint Nextel Corp. threw caution to the wind by staging a lavish event in New York to unveil a new device. (I only say lavish because I am not sure how else to describe an event that has David Blaine as its featured attraction. I thought he was still buried underground somewhere or in a block of ice. Or at least I hoped he was.)
This was a daring plan for Sprint Nextel as the location and tone of the event mirrored what Verizon Wireless had pulled off only a few weeks prior when announcing the iPhone. With such a precedent set, many were hoping Sprint Nextel would at least announce something as audacious. Maybe an iPhone with WiMAX?
But, that was not to be. Instead, Sprint Nextel unveiled a new device from Kyocera that’s only unique distinction was that it had a screen that expanded Gobot-style.
Not that the device, or Gobots, was not cool. It was definitely a step up for Kyocera and seemed to further breach the murky waters separating smart phones from tablet devices. But, the Kyocera brand does not seem to have the same attraction as that of Apple, and with what seemed to be about 1,000 Android-powered devices introduced in the past 13 minutes, there was little beyond its transformative effect to set it apart. Plus, the device did not include the new marketing buzz word “4G” that consumers are demanding, though they are not really sure why.
I could be wrong on this dour outlook for the new device and it could turn out to be Sprint Nextel’s Evo 4G for 2011. But, at this point I am not willing to make that bet.
–Next, President Barak Obama took a little winter vacation to the frozen tundra of Northern Michigan to unveil some murky government plans to support/build/entice/beg for a wireless broadband network that covers 98% of the U.S. population. (For that 2%, or roughly 6 million people, that are not part of this plan, oh well.)
In announcing the initiative, Obama laid out a number of vague ways in which this network would materialize, including the use of funds from spectrum auctions, using assets somehow recovered from television broadcasters, building out the network as part of nationwide public safety effort and some sort of initiative to include public companies in the plans.
(I should also point out that the location where Obama gave the speech from was a place that recently deployed a WiMAX network to serve the community. Too bad the president did not throw in a shout out to the WiMAX community in the speech. That could have been a banner occasion for those folks that are always in need of a banner.)
I know politicians can never really provide details on any sort of plan that they read off a teleprompter so that they always have a way out, but the vagaries of this plan has left me more dumbfounded than normal.
Aren’t there already several mobile broadband networks currently deployed that cover close to that 98% of the U.S. population that Obama is looking to reach? Sure, they might not yet be “4G” services, but if my memory serves me correctly, operators are looking to expand those capabilities across all of their current coverage areas over the next couple of years.
Now, I am sure many of those operators would love to have access to additional spectrum assets that could be freed up by the government, and maybe that is what Obama is really talking about when he says the government is looking to support those efforts. But, as we have seen already, broadcasters are not just going to let the government have those valuable airwaves back for free, which could be tricky as there are laws that prevent the government from using spectrum auction proceeds for anything other than depositing into the U.S. treasury.
It definitely was a significant announcement for the mobile industry in that it showed that the need for expanding mobile broadband services is known at the highest levels of our government, but the fact that the government wants to become deeply involved in the process leaves me with an ill feeling.
—Hewlett-Packard Co. made news in that it finally showed some fruit from the labor of acquiring Palm Inc. last year. The company unveiled a tablet device that looked shockingly similar to just about every other tablet device that has been introduced over the past 12 months, as well as a pair of smart phones. The devices’ only real differentiation was the use of an operating system that despite many claiming to be superior to just about any other OS on the market, is still one that has so far failed to gain much support from the all-important application developer market.
Sure, the new tablet and smart phones look great and have all the features you could want. But was there anything revolutionary about the devices that will reach out and slap people in the face? Maybe if they have been introduced 12 months ago, but not today. Also, with very little information on the exact launch plans for the devices it’s hard to not expect people to come away from the event less than impressed.
–Speaking of the iPhone launch at Verizon Wireless, apparently the hordes of current iPhone owners that swore up and down that they would leave AT&T Mobility the nanosecond after the device was available anywhere else look to have had other things to do this week. Despite reports from Verizon Wireless that the company had to stop pre-orders for the device mere seconds after making them available online, the “real” test showing how successful anything is – people standing in a line – failed to materialize.
Except for a
few notable exceptions, published reports indicated a lack of “line hysteria” surrounding the official launch of the device at retail locations. (I am relying strictly on published reports for this as I long ago lost the enjoyment of watching people standing in line for days waiting for Apple products to launch.)
I am sure this is only a temporary issue and that once people are able to dig out from the snow mounds that have enveloped their homes and cars they will begin to trickle into retail locations to swipe up the device, early termination fees be damned!
–And finally, Nokia Corp. continued to slog through its 12-step program of finally realizing it was not the only provider of mobile devices. The company announced plans to hook its smart phone operating system future to those wonderful folks at Microsoft Corp., who seem to be slogging through their own mobile mess.
Sure, people were hoping Nokia would bite the bullet and partner with Google to use the Android OS, but with a new executive that happened to come from Microsoft, was anyone really surprised with their decision.
Despite the letdown, this does appear to be a good step for Nokia as its current path did not seem to be working in the increasingly important smart phone space. This also hopefully puts to rest its announcement last year about partnering with Intel Corp. on that creeply named MeeGo platform that I don’t think anyone really thought was a good decision.
While there are still plenty of hurdles for this new union of “people that have lost their way” to overcome, we can at least hope that in this one instance a pair of dysfunctional players can straighten each other out “Leaving Las Vegas” style. Oh, wait … that didn’t end well.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras courtesy of our RCRBlog at uplugged.www.rcrwireless.com:
–(From Matt Kapko) I did it again. I bought another iPhone. This time it’s the same iPhone that I already own. Less exciting. Nothing new. Just the same old iPhone 4, but this time with Verizon Wireless.
Instead of waiting in line for maybe 10 grueling hours to get my hands on Verizon’s iPhone 4 today, I decided that having it in my hands before Mobile World Congress wasn’t worth it, so I pre-ordered online.
Sure I have to wait another week, maybe more, and I might even miss the multiple delivery attempts and have to pick it up in person at some shipping facility in a far-off industrial park. Either way, the money has been spent and the process has begun.
I applaud Verizon Wireless for opening up its first batch of pre-orders to existing customers a week ago. They closed sales less than day later with reports suggesting as many as 100,000 iPhones were sold. Just before midnight out west on Feb. 8, Verizon Wireless opened up pre-orders to all customers, including new ones like me.
For what it’s worth, the process was entirely smooth — dare I say flawless? After selecting the models my wife and I wanted, I picked our service plans and entered the information required to port our numbers. I was all done within 10 minutes.
It’s been about 30 hours since and my order status is still in process with an expected ship date of Feb. 18. Beginning at 7 a.m. today, Verizon and numerous retail outlets started selling the device in person. I’m not sure how long the wait might have been and this time around, I wasn’t willing to find out. A new iPhone might have been enough to convince me. But this time I will simply have to wait.
Please check back daily at RCR Unplugged for more posts from our editorial staff.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@ardenmedia.com.
