AT&T iPhone: Death Grip on Apple’s Cash Cow
Filed under: Cell Phone Information, Cell Phones
When Apple decided to end exclusivity deals with their iPhone in Europe we all knew that profits would begin to rise, it was not as if any of us did not expect it. AT&T are still smiling that they hold a death grip on Apple’s cash cow, these are the words used by Engadget.
The iPhone used to be exclusive to the O2 network in the UK, but since Apple opened the smartphone up to Orange, sales have shot right up. According to research from Bernstein, Apple has increased their market share by at least 32 percent, an increase of 11 percent over the month before.
Apple’s success is sure to have an affect in its closest rival, this being RIM. Apple has sold more than 600,000 iPhone’s in the third quarter of 2009, which is just in France.
With the success that Apple is having in Europe we have to wonder what AT&T must be thinking. Surely they can no longer rest easy and think for one moment that Apple will not be taking those sales figures into consideration.
We will learn what Apple plans to do in the first part of 2010; this is when the iPhone exclusivity deal with AT&T ends. How will it go?
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So who’s Apple’s alternative carrier in the US? Currently, the only other major carrier that supports GSM is T-Mobile. Going to Sprint or Verizon in the immediate future would require new phone hardware. And how does that help the current iPhone owners who may be itching to leave AT&T?