Digg - Oh, Canada: My Home and iPhone-less Land

While we Canadians can buy every other bit of gear Apple produces, we get absolutely no iPhone love. Why is that exactly? Rogers GSM Monopoly? Exorbitant data rates? Comcasts trademark dispute? Apples lack of urgency? Read on…

Patents Pondered: An AT&T-less iPhone World? - Phone different

Right now, when you pick up your iPhone, slide to unlock, and tap the Stocks widget, you get relatively up-to-date (within 20 min.) quotes. Right now, when you pick up your iPhone, slide to unlock, and tap the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, you get a list of songs you can flick-scroll through and tap to purchase through your iTunes account. Come June, you’ll be able to do similar with the App Store.

In a different world, similar functionality would have existed via an “iCarrier” Store. Unlike traditional MVNOs, however, the patent filing indicates Apple may not have bought minutes in bulk from an MNO and simply resold them to iPhone users. Rather, they proposed a model combining the previously mentioned Stocks widget’s near realtime price quoting with the iTunes Wi-Fi Store’s (or App Store’s) near instant transactional processing and purchasing system.

With this system a (presumably WebObjects-based) server would store up-to-date rate information for all regional, affiliated networks and then select whichever provided the best option at the moment, or — in an even more utopian service — allow the end-user to select for themselves as simply and easily as buying a Tune or downloading an App.

Again with responding to the Thurrott blog trolling…

iPhone, for the time period in question, was new offering (less than a year on market) of a single device (8gb), on a single technology (GSM), on a single carrier (AT&T), in a single country (USA). (We could count single carriers in Germany, UK, and France as well, but the numbers don’t yet seem significant and the same would apply only more so for the below comparison).

By comparison, WinMob which has years of marketing behind it, runs on dozens of devices (multiple form factors from multiple hardware vendors including Palm, HTC, Motorola, etc.), on both major technologies (GSM & CDMA), on all carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint), in many, many countries around the world.

The average sell-through of a single WinMob device on a single GSM carrier in the US might be a better comparison, but given everything about, that WinMob is only outselling the iPhone by 3 to 1 is incredibly bad news for WinMob. It should be 20 to 1 if not more.

Ouch.

Windows Mobile outsold iPhone in 2H 2007 - Paul’s SuperSite blog

While Apple conveniently fails to accurately portray the iPhone’s real market share, Microsoft today announced figures that puts Apple’s smart phone-like device in context. In the second half of 2007, Microsoft’s partners shold 14.3 million Windows Mobile phones. This compares to 4 million iPhones that Apple sold in the same time period.

Rogers, with the purchase of Fido, was given a monopoly over GSM coverage in Canada, and as such needs to face all the regulatory and government oversight of any other monopoly.

How are they allowed to get away with charging such outrageous data rates? Is there no ministry or CRTC-like organization accountable to the Canadian people on this?

And how can Rogers themselves not understand volume pricing, where 1 bilked corporate user @ $200 pales to insignificance next to 1000 pro/consumer users @ $20 a pop.
Rogers Unlimited data plan not so unlimited after all

At first glance, the plan seems fairly straightforward: unlimited mobile data and Internet access for a mere extra $7 per month on top of your existing phone plan. However, when you look a little more closely, the “unlimited” deal turns out to be anything but unlimited. There is a limit of 2,500 sent text messages per month, and 1,000 picture or video messages, despite the fact that these too are “data” and should be unlimited. Of greater concern is the fact that the deal only applies to select phones  and does not include Blackberries, Windows Mobile devices, laptops using PC cards for mobile data access, or unlocked devices such as Apples iPhone. The latter is still officially unavailable in Canada, but many wondered if the revealing of this “unlimited” plan was a clue that Rogers was about to announce that they had secured exclusive access to sell the iPhone in the Great White North. This does not appear to be the case at the moment.

I don’t know who I’m more angry with:

1. AppleInsider for the moronic reporting that got my hopes up.
2. Rogers for the continued, non-competitive business practices that dashed my hopes.
3. Or me, for still having hopes.

Thanks, data-rate-tards!

How there has never been any Government investigation into the anti-competitive nature of Canadian data rates, how our politicians and regulatory agencies are not utterly humiliated by the worse-than-third-world communication standards puked over Canadians, and how each and every user doesn’t raise bloody murder online, in writing, and in statement to the CRTC (or whomever has regulatory authority) is beyond me.

(Not even mentioning how much money Rogers would make if they really did offer a $20 (or whatever competitively priced) unlimited internet access package — have they never heard of volume pricing or economy of scale? 100 desperate corp Crackberry accounts @$200 is far, far less than thousands upon thousands of regular consumers @$20. Is everybody chasing the prosumer market but Rogers??)

AppleInsider | Rogers unlimited data plan an inroad for iPhone in Canada?

Update: Unfortunately, Rogers new $20 Communication Value Pack is presently limited to just web browsing on cell phones with only those browsers authorized by Rogers for the plan. Browsing through other means, as well as use of email clients over the network, will continue to incur a 5 cents/KB charge.