“We have not discussed nor do we have any plans to launch an MVNO,” said an Apple spokeswoman in a statement on Tuesday.
Being a mobile carrier seems like a shit show to me.
Apple denies it will become a mobile carrier
“We have not discussed nor do we have any plans to launch an MVNO,” said an Apple spokeswoman in a statement on Tuesday.
Being a mobile carrier seems like a shit show to me.
Now we get to watch all the Tech Media walk back their earlier stories about this stupid rumor.
Yeah…right…not gonna happen….
Not only is being a mobile carrier a shit show, but by being an MVNO, they don’t get control over key aspects of the stack, meaning they can’t really change it all that much. It still wouldn’t be economical to offer reasonable unlimited LTE. Just look at Ting, one of the most reasonable and customer focused MVNOs out there. Plus, They’d be stuck on substandard networks T-Mobile and Sprint. AT&T and Verizon would never in a billion years let Apple setup an MVNO on their networks.
Seems to me if it’s something my small carrier (Airvoice Wireless) can make a profit from, the task should be learnable enough for Apple to succeed at it. I’m hoping Apple’s still looking into this, regardless of what they’re saying publicly.
Why? What would be the benefit to Apple and Apple customers? Unlike Google, Apple pretty much owns the carriers. No carrier branding on iPhones, software updates dictated by Apple not the carriers etc. I don’t see what the point would be.
When the iPhone was yet to be announced, and was just a rumor all these years ago, I had hoped that this would be what Apple would do. If they were to do it, that would have been the time.
And if they couldn’t have made a deal with a carrier, they may well have done so. But Cingular was desperate enough to take on the iPhone, a deal that carried over to AT&T when it bought the carrier. (I doubt that AT&T would have made such an agreement if it wasn’t already in place at the time of the merger.)
Today, there are enough MVNO’s that can provide SIM cards to put into unlocked iPhones that Apple has no compelling reason to become one itself.
I had always hoped that Apple would buy Clearwire from Sprint. With their cash they could have built out the entire country with high quality broadband. Then provided broadband as part of iCloud services. That would be a real lock in to their hardware to offer good, reliable data at a reasonable cost. FaceTime is already and excellent VoIP client. But Apple is a global company, soon with the US not even their biggest customer. But I never see Apple becoming an MVNO with less control than they have now.
It’s a shit show because all the current carriers are shit shows. It’s a market that’s extremely ripe for disruption because all of the current big carriers are over priced and extremely anti-consumer. These are some of the worst companies on the planet as far as consumer satisfaction goes. There’s no real competition among any of them which is why prices are high and data caps are small. The massive barrier to entry is what prevents any newcomer from disrupting the established players.
Rather than launching an MVNO it would be better for Apple to buy an existing carrier or to create their own. That would allow them to truly disrupt the market but it’s unlikely due to the massive cost of creating a new mobile carrier or buying an existing one. I would love for them to do it, but I think it’s unlikely as there are other, bigger problems for them to solve.
Part of the rumor is that Apple would cover across several MVNO networks, so your phone picks the best network to be on at the time depending on signal strength. That sounds interesting to me, however, I know I’ve read of other people or companies working on similar services. I don’t think they’ve gotten very far. I would expect Apple would team with them rather than risk money of MVNO stuff at this stage of the game.
Ting.
The benefit would be increased competition and lower prices for bandwidth. Take a look at cities where Google has rolled out their ISP fiber service, for example. Existing providers have had to lower their prices to retain customers.
Apple doesn’t “own” the carriers, it merely has a strong negotiating position as a maker of highly-desired hardware and services that keeps carriers’ hands off the consumer experience. But for the most part, the big players still collude to divide up territory so they can all keep voice and data pricing artificially high. MNVOs are the only relief.
I’d welcome some sort of partnership, if not a full venture.