> Not really sure this is relevant. Apple forced the carriers to change their business models -- first AT&T and then the others
1. didn't see it then, don't see it now. Then again I'm in europe, mayhaps US carriers were significantly more overbearing. I don't recall carriers being good friends of the consumer though so not overly likely
2. this responds to a comment specifically mentioning allowing "an open mobile internet". Again this might have been because I was in Europe, but as my comment notes I did have access to an "open mobile internet". The experience sucked but technically there it was.
> 1. didn't see it then, don't see it now. Then again I'm in europe, mayhaps US carriers were significantly more overbearing. I don't recall carriers being good friends of the consumer though so not overly likely
The U.S. was indeed terrible: very restricted competition on phones (two year contracts, models often specific to one carrier, etc.), prohibitively high data rates and extreme barriers to entry for anyone trying to build a phone-based business.
Around 2000, I worked for a web company in San Diego where Qualcomm was trying to build a stable of companies developing mobile apps to boost demand for better hardware. We looked into the business model and each of the U.S. carriers wanted roughly $50K simply for the privilege of listing your app in their store plus a generous cut of the sales, should you have any and that number wasn't fixed but based on what they thought you could afford so our better-known clients got estimates well into 6 figures, again simply for being listed.
Unsurprisingly, we looked at WAP instead but it was so limited in practice that we gave up and nobody I knew used WAP or J2ME apps. As far as I could tell, that only changed when Apple had enough clout to get AT&T to go for a smaller slice of a much, much larger pie.
> The U.S. was indeed terrible: very restricted competition on phones (two year contracts, models often specific to one carrier, etc.), prohibitively high data rates and extreme barriers to entry for anyone trying to build a phone-based business.
For the most part that was also the case in Europe, though countries started cracking down on some of the bullshit fairly early (e.g. the ability to move your number from one carrier to the other and requirements that phones be unlockable after some time). I don't know about the phone-based business aspect.
The big thing which I believe really killed business options, though, was data pricing. Before the iPhone made affordable unlimited plans the expected default, it was assumed that anyone who wanted data was a business user on an expense account and the pricing was so high that everyone I knew treated app usage as an emergency-only measure rather than a part of daily life.
I remember reading a blog post by a mobile dev manager saying that it was was shocking that the iPhone didn't support J2ME and that Apple would inevitably be forced to support it by market realities. Good times.
1. didn't see it then, don't see it now. Then again I'm in europe, mayhaps US carriers were significantly more overbearing. I don't recall carriers being good friends of the consumer though so not overly likely
2. this responds to a comment specifically mentioning allowing "an open mobile internet". Again this might have been because I was in Europe, but as my comment notes I did have access to an "open mobile internet". The experience sucked but technically there it was.