NEWS: Verizon and AT&T May Both Get Apple Tablet

What, me guess(tm)?

Well, let's see what I can excavate:

Verizon adds 665,000 new customers in the second quarter. AT&T added

However, Verizon customers are defecting to AT&T, presumably to get the iPhone 4.

Note that churn is measured in percent of (postpaid) customer base that change vendors per month. At about a 1% churn rate, a vendor would recycle about 1/8th of their postpaid customers every year.

Verizon is currently at 81.5 million postpaid customers, AT&T at 67.0 million postpaid. No way to declare or predict a winner quite yet as the first quarter numbers do not include Droid-X and most iPhone 4 sales.

Meanwhile, it appears that Apple has found a scapegoat for the antenna problem:

I see no evidence of that, and don't think it likely.

There's ample evidence of continued rapid growth (but since you're probably just going to reject them, I'm not going to waste time on more citations).

Flurry data is biased toward Apple. Got anything more objective?

Actually, it does. If all the Android phones were released simultaneously, it's conceivable that they may all have some common problem overlooked during the development. However, with the current staggered release of various models by various vendors, each succeeding model builds upon the lessons learned by the competitors. This is the way to make incremental improvements, which are certainly beneficial to the customer.

Judging by the iPhone 4 sales, consumers may be listening, but they don't seem to care and buy the phone anyway. I guess the US buying public has been successfully educated in accepting defects. Polling a few friends that have iPhone 4's, the consensus seems to be that whatever problems arrise, they're minor and Apple will fix it.

Consumers don't want to hear about problems. Just watch what happens when a company issues a safety recall on a product. 20 years ago, it would produce a major drop in sales. These days, it does nothing.

Of course. Everyone is jealous of a winner. Nothing we do will ever change that.

Sure, but the fanatics are also the early adopters and first to buy anything new. I keep waiting for a iPod Touch with a GPS, camera, and built in microphone. Yawn...

Yep, but as I previously suggested, the real brand loyalty is to the cellular vendor (AT&T or Verizon) as enforced by a 2 year contract. If Verizon magically appears with a CDMA iPhone tomorrow, how many current AT&T customers, with iPhone are going to pay $325 early termination fee to jump ship?

There's another factor at work here. Fear of screwing up. Everyone "knows" that the iPhone will do everything, because of the 4 year track record. If not, there's an app for it somewhere. The GUM (great unwashed masses) are not so sure if the various Android phones can do the same. FUD (fear uncertainty doubt) at work in the Android market.

I don't see it. There aren't enough Apple haters, clueless Apple fans, and brand loyal fanatics to make much of a difference.

Incidentally, when Apple finally gets the color matching correct, and the white iPhone 4 is released, don't forget to count it as a seperate product, like the various Android phones.

the reports i've seen say a substantial number will leave at&t when there are alternative carriers for the iphone, especially those who aren't subject to the new higher early termination fee (i.e., most, since it was raised just a few months ago).

Something else to think about. During a tour of Apple?s device testing facilities (where Mansfield, but not Papermaster, was present), we were told that the iPhone 4 was being tested for a full two years before its launch. That means it was being tested before Papermaster got to Apple. While it?s not clear when the final hardware was approved for production, it?s certainly possible that Papermaster had little to do with that specific device?s hardware creation.

That said, in the time leading up to the iPhone 4?s launch, he clearly had to be heavily involved in every aspect of it ? including the antenna. Is Papermaster a fall guy in this situation?

Looks to me like Apple is somewhere between Phase 4 and Phase 5. ;)

Your original link cited Flurry data, but as soon as I use it it's "biased toward Apple". Hilarious.

good catch. he's a hypocrite.

Think more carefully before you dash off a reply -- I used it precisely because it's (a) biased toward Apple and (b) still shows a huge boom in Android development. More representative data shows an even bigger Android boom.

p.s. App development for iPad and other iDevices is irrelevant in this context.

You're claiming you posted data biased toward Apple despite having access to "more representative data" that more strongly supported your point.

That makes no sense. A more reasonable interpretation of the exchange is that you found Flurry data from last October that supported your point, so you posted it unquestioningly. But then once you saw more recent Flurry data that supported my point, you decided Flurry data had to be biased.

Think more carefully before you dash off a reply.

It's not, and it baffles me that people believe it is. What is an iPhone? It's basically an iPod Touch with a cellular version of what used to be called a "voice modem". Did people count computers with modems and without modems as different types of devices? No. So why does it make any sense to do that in this market?

This is a battle for the future of mobile computing. Supporting cellular data and/or voice is just another feature that a particular mobile computing device might have or not.

absolutely false. android is an operating system on various devices, including tablets later this year, so you *can't* ignore the ipod touch and ipad. unless of course, you have an agenda.

You're making invalid assumptions again. I used data biased toward Apple in the hope you wouldn't reject it out of hand, but alas. ;)

Think more carefully before insulting someone with idle speculation.

It is irrelevant, and I'm not going to be drawn into another pointless argument just because you feel the need to move the goalposts again (and again).

It's a battle for the mobile phone market. The iPad market is a different market and battle. If you disagree, try making a phone call with an iPad, and let me know how well it's "working for you". ;)

it's very easy to do using skype, but more importantly, the ipad is an ios device. i'm sure when android tablets come out you'll be counting those. double-standard as always.

The iPad is arguably a different market. I would say it was definitely a different market, except that it's possible to 'universal' apps.

The iPod Touch is absolutely _not_ a different market in any meaningful sense, despite the number of people who'd like to frame it that way to make Android look better.

Wrong.

Your response has no substance.

Wrong.

because you say so?

you're going to have to do better than that.

I think you're looking at "market" from the manufacturer's or developer's perspective rather than consumer's- The iPad, Touch, and iPhone are from completely different consumer markets: the iPhone is a phone with an iPod/game machine/mobile computurish-thing built in, and the Touch is an iPod. The iPhone user experience is predicated on ubiquitous connectivity, whereas the iPod is based on casual part-time connectivity. And despite the statements by Jobs or anyone here, the iPad is in the netbook market- a small,lightweight computer with a subset of "real' laptop features. The irony, of course, is that most netbooks are no longer in the netbook market- they're in the "crappy low-end laptop" market.

From the perspective of the coding tools, there may be no real difference, but consider the perspective of the app writer or user: if the app requires accurate location info and continuous access to online databases/servers, it's an "iPhone" or "iPad 3G" app rather than a Touch/iPad WiFi app.

The devices might not be very different from a hardware perspective, but user scenarios, use cases and their markets are completely different, much like the "PDA" vs. "Smartphone" market- the former no longer exists for all intents and purposes, despite most smartphones being a PDA with one "extra" radio.

It's sort of like desktops/laptops/netbooks- they're all compatible will the same apps, use the same OSes, etc., but you'll likely find different apps used on laptops* and netbooks* than desktops, at least outside of the "core" apps like browsers and email clients.

I'd buy that, but I personally know at least a couple of people who want iPhones, but have purchased iPod Touches to get similar functionality without having to switch to AT&T and/or sign two year contracts.

The iPad does compete with netbooks, and clearly isn't interchangeable, as far as consumers are concerned, with the iPod Touch or iPhone. However, we're discussing things at a _platform_ level here. The fact that apps are easily portable between all of these devices means a stronger developer community spanning these devices, which means more and better apps for all of them. And that's going to prove to be a pretty big deal in the long run.

Sure, but that's a minority of apps.

Err? That's even less true, especially these days. Even in the video production industry, which requires some very demanding apps laptops are the norm -- and are used to run those very demanding apps on a day to day basis, with only specific _particularly_ demanding parts of workflows being handled on towers.