“All three major Russian cellcos have stopped selling the iPhone, the most dramatic instance so far in a rising tide of operator backlash against Apple’s tough contractual requirements. VimpelCom has severed its ties with the handset provider, following in the footsteps of MTS and MegaFon. VimpelCom says it has put Samsung at the top of its list of smartphones to promote under its BeeLine brand. According to PhoneArena, VimpelCom blamed ‘draconian contracts’ and ‘harsh conditions […] especially in the marketing department’ for its decision to dump the iPhone and sign a new deal with Samsung.” Apple’s treatment of carriers has long been a sore point, however, carriers didn’t have much choice. Now that the iPhone is by far no longer the only big money maker, carriers have more leverage.
Here in the USA “Carriers have more leverage” is not exactly sweet music. The only leverage that is good is when we customers have more leverage.
That is what happens in most European countries where we tend to use more pre-paids than contracts.
Yes carriers having more leverage over supply contracts, not service contracts.
iPhone made little impact on the power of the consumer against the carriers in US. You still pay a lot and get not so much. Apple however got a lot of negotiating power with the carriers in US. Over here in EU, iPhones reintroduced operator hardware locking.
Why on earth do data carriers even have anything to do with mobile phone sales?
I don’t buy a car from the people who maintain the roads; I don’t buy food from the people who build kitchens and sell appliances. I don’t even buy a landline phone from the phone company — I buy it from an electronics store.
Personally I prefer to buy my mobile phones the same way, direct from the manufacturer, and pick my carrier and SIM card on my own. But, here in the US that’s very much the exception…
Americans get gouged for cell phone service too.
There were efforts by ISPs to “subsidize” PCs but failed. For some reason, customers have no problem paying full price for a dekstop or laptop, but when you tell them that the pocket computer they call a “smartphone” costs a considerable amount of money too, they freak out. “Subsidizes” should be illegal (they are in some countries), but people think they are getting a deal, or worse, that they are being “ripped off” by the SIM-free price, so they go it.
Edited 2013-07-17 22:35 UTC
If the phone and carrier were separated the manufacturers and carriers would both lose. Most people would buy cheap handsets and budget plans.
The PC analogy is not really appropriate because people typically keep PCs and laptops for much longer than phones.
Here in the UK most people seem to pick up the ‘Pay through your contract’ phone deals, which makes the contract higher but you pay almost nothing up front for the phone, quite often they are free up front. If you don’t want a massive outlay every time you change your phone to the latest model then it makes sense to me! What’s more after 18 months you generally have a perfectly good smartphone ready to sell on eBay as you’ve just upgraded, so you can actually get money in your pocket for upgrading, done that 3 times now!
It’s because consumers are sold on the idea that they’re getting their new, top of the range, phone for free (obviously consumers still pay for it – just via the carriers contract).
So it’s more akin to ISPs giving customers a free router and Sky / Cable companies giving customers a free set top box.
Subsidies
“…especially in the marketing department”
Sounds like they want to put crap-ware on your phone.
It’s an iPhone, Apple decide what software comes with it and can add/drop features at will regardless of deals with carriers.
I’m guessing Apple mostly demanded advertising of their product(s) as part of the deal for them to supply handsets.
I’m also guessing Samsung have probably played at least some part in this, in more than just supplying handsets without such demands but… well, I’m getting into territory that’s best left alone without evidence.
Yes, wise move. There’s nothing vaguely ‘in-the-business-and-in-the-know’ anecdotal here or even something extrapolated from triangulated tangential inferences based on anything remotely known.
Just you pushing crapware of your own.
Pro-Korea folk exist. You just encountered one.
Orf.
I gave some considered speculation on some speculation I considered less likely but you Sir are just encouraging re-enactments from Yes Minister.
I do not think that we have the same understanding of the word ‘considered’.
I don’t need “Yes, Minister” (though you may continue to call me ‘Sir’ if you want).
It’s a simple proposition: put up or shut up. If you are so sure of yourself, give me and everyone else something more credible, something verifiable. If not, have the sense if not the common decency to desist in making such assertions. Even FUD usually has some feasible basis in truth, that’s how it works.
What you aver is more akin to a calumny.
And don’t be like one of our ministers, instead respond to the point.
Orf
Why do you insist? I thought I was amongst those with a least a little insight into the topic which they’ve commented on but if you must…
It is a fact that Apple control their software platform, it makes them unique in the mobile world and is seen as a boon for consumers to not have “crap-ware” loaded by default.
Therefore when a carrier complains of Apple’s marketing requirements it seems more likely that they’re talking about the money they’d have to invest in additional advertising featuring only an iPhone along with their services.
For the later, you have the major carriers of a very large nation all dropping Apple and publicly talking about a deal with Samsung. This nation happens to be Russia but this would prick my ears up wherever it was.
Now take your rude abrasive manner elsewhere, there’s no need.
Edited 2013-07-17 22:19 UTC
You are still dodging!
So, it’s nothing to do with the facts as we know them about Apple’s strictures, it’s nothing to do with the recent opening of an online Apple store with no mark-up for carriers (as reported by someone else) but it’s apparently everything to do with the surmise that Samsung is using tactics that have nothing to do with open market conditions.
I still insist. Evidence, please.
As to that, you can take your faux-mellifluous manner and stick it wherever your limited education allows you to imagine.
Orf.
Oh… I get it, you’re assuming I’m a Apple drone defending their corporate lock-ins and I’m pinning these events on illegal activity by Samsung.
Well, I’m not. You’ll find I bash them just as much as anyone for unethical practices.
I just commented on someone’s observation but you came along and made it all about how smart you are. Well, congratulations on your vocabulary but at the end of the day this experience has been no different to encountering a trolling prick. Bye.
I don’t care what you call me, whether it’s ‘Sir’ one minute or ‘prick’ the next.
I am not assuming anything except the assertion you made, and I am calling you out on it.
One of my own last statements was “Evidence, please”, which I feel is polite enough.
Blame in on a certain literary style, blame it on assuming I assume you are an Apple fanboi, but I would look closer to home if I were in your shoes, and you know that well enough yourself, or why else indeed stop yourself from going too far without evidence originally.
You don’t even have the gumption to say straight what you have implied; all you’d need to do is say something along the lines of “In my view, this can only really point to Samsung’s bribing those carriers”, you might then earn some respect.
Instead you squirm, you wriggle and you still have neither evidence nor personal credibility.
Congratulations!
I didn’t say bribery, maybe what was offered was just too good terms… I’m open minded.
The reason I run from your interrogation is because I didn’t come here for an argument, I came to debate the topic in hand in a reasonable fashion in order to unwind after work… not to defend things I didn’t say or frankly don’t even care that much about. Technical matters can be absolute, political matters made away from the public are naturally a bit more open for speculation.
You didn’t just ask for evidence (although I’m not looking to prove anything) you did at least bring some of your own views on the actual topic finally but if you must insist on me soul searching might I suggest you stop drowning in your own smugness and supposed superiority when, as you say, you don’t know me.
More excuses. So you imply potential bribery on the part of a multinational corporation as a means of winding down after work? The mind boggles.
For information, as far as I know, this information is posted on the open Web, and those posting are responsible for what they post.
What has my knowing you to do with me asking you to stop vilifying an entire company if you have no evidence, and to stop making specious claims or inferences you cannot possibly back up?
Yes, speculate away but I know families that work for Samsung, in its many divisions: these are people, too – you airily make such statements as a means of diversion while they are working hard to produce a lot of interesting, intelligent, new things to the best of their ability and conscience to make their way in the world.
Why would you need to stop yourself from going further if you merely wanted to indicate “Samsung probably made a better offer”?
Nothing you say stacks up, frankly.
So, I use words you have may to look up. It’s called educating oneself. I come from a poor background, learning was my way out. It’s nothing to do with feeling smug or winning arguments.
See what you want to see. Next time remember the notion: “Say what you mean and mean what you say” before spouting anything else in an open forum.
Orf (and out).
You not knowing me has to do with the personal nature of your criticisms, you seem to focus on what a better person you are but I see no evidence, I think it’s more likely you misrepresent the model to society you’d like to believe you are.
But regardless, I’ve clearly unwittingly thrown you into an unnatural amount of defensiveness for a company who are close to your heart and I shouldn’t have got involved.
In which case I apologise to you and all the swathes of people you know with a vested interest in this; for the devastating news that I made a small aside in a reply to a moot point in the comments section on a tech blog which reposted a small interest story, suggesting a range of possibilities in terms of incentives Samsung offered as part of the deal they just signed with all the major carriers in Russia.
But most of all I apologise to the poor poor children, who was thinking of them?
Edited 2013-07-19 10:35 UTC
I applaude your search for the real truth ….
I would just love to also have it on the articles “pro apple” or “pro microsoft”
( nothing specificly directed at you , because i dont know you )
I am not entirely sure whom you are addressing but in case it’s me: I think if you go over my comments on this forum, I on the whole speak as I know and find.
In terms of Apple and Samsung, I think my second-highest number of votes up was won in relation to a comment praising how Apple manages to pull of the trick of ‘engineering desire’ for its products. I think you will also find that I have provided information that is not in Samsung’s favour at all.
Also, I am rarely so assertive, and hardly ever use expletives or similar words. Someone has to post something really senseless for me to react in this way. I am not happy about that but I also can’t hide that I am really very annoyed in this instance.
Thanks, Orf.
I think this may have contributed towards reseller antipathy:
http://store.apple.com/ru/
Apple recently opened an online store in Russia. No reseller markups.
Though for completely different reasons..
Only cellphones assembled here can be sold, and Apple is the only brand that refuses to do it.
Wow” the fact that this discussion is happening without tong-in-cheek is pretty fucking amazing!!!!!
How long ago were all of you, and me, bitching about the telecoms and how they had us by the balls and were charging us a butt load for shitty service and really crappy phones with virtually no function beyond that of a basic phone!
Now the telecoms are the underdog getting the sympathy?
Holy fuck! Talk about a 180!
You know that’s mainly a U.S problem, right? I’ve always been able to buy a cheap phone from any store.
For most of the world, not really.
I’ve been able to buy any GSM phone I wanted to use with non-contract T-Mobile service in the USA for many years (T-Mobile uses the same radio bands as Europe, which helps). They even provided technical support for a problem I had with my N900.
The other three “major carriers”, not so much.
So it surprises me that T-Mobile is still the smallest of the four.
Go figure.
Clearly you’ve not experienced the lack of coverage T-mobile has in a huge swath of this country. Their coverage map says one thing, but I’ve had T-mobile and their true coverage doesn’t even come close and that’s just for GSM. Their data network is worse. The hilarious part is that I’ve seen T-mobile stores in an area where they have no coverage at all. The phones get no service, even in the store and they wonder why nobody buys one. Yet they keep these stores open.
It’s not hard to find an unlocked GSM phone that works on AT&T either, but they’ve got problems of their own. Their network is oversold to the point of collapse, so even in high coverage areas their service has become unreliable and that’s putting it kindly. That leaves both our GSM carriers in problematic positions, and consumer choice does not work with our CDMA situation since most CDMA phones here use internal sims that absolutely must be activated by the carrier in order to work.
I wouldn’t presume to debate you, as I have no references to coverage studies. I can say, howevere, that I’ve traveled to about 28 different continental states, and only had coverage issues in the farmland regions of Iowa. (I’m speaking of the past few years – in the early 2000’s I had far more coverage issues, so much so that we switched to AT&T for several years until they covered the area we travel.)
Regardless of what you read on an Internet forum, though, every buyer should test coverage in the areas they frequent before committing to a carrier. T-Mobile has a program that enables you todo that cheaply and with no commitment. I suspect the others do as well.
They didn’t exactly stop selling iPhones right now, here is an explanation: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/17/russia-iphone-idUSL1N0FN2… TL;DR: One carrier stopped selling iPhones, all other carriers were not selling iPhone5 at all.