Larry Dignan summarizes Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett who says it’s laughable that the wireless industry is anticompetitive and the Feds don’t have to worry about wrecking the wireless industry—Apple already has.
My instinctive reaction was this is similar to periodic pronouncements from SAP and other ERP vendors that their new tools will kill “outsourcing” scope and fees.
The only thing they wreck is their customer’s TCO.
I posted this comment back:
“While I agree the government inquiry may come to nothing, Moffett's argument is ingenious. By agreeing to a locked SIM, allowing AT&T to continue to play games with 3rd party apps like Skype and continuing to not push AT&T on documented service coverage issues and a slew of other areas, Apple has not wrecked much in wireless.
The reality is after 9 years of 3G rollout the US still has an unbelievably low 3G coverage, and for all the talk of 4G the rollout will be similarly slow. That is where the government needs to be become more interventionist. In our system of checks and balances we need the executive branch to offset the strong lobby telcos have in our legislative branch. But the agenda needs to be broader than just device lock-in. It should be how does the US have the speediest and widest coverage at the lowest price.
Sorry but Apple so far has not done much to change that goal and in fact may have hurt it by agreeing to some of AT&T's pricing and practices.”
