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There has been public outcry of Apple for making back-room deals with AT&T for their iPhone. How it works is this: Apple sells their product to AT&T, AT&T sells the iPhone to consumers (with different plans), and those two companies profit. AT&T is the only company offering the iPhone because Apple only does business with them.

This, people, is the definition of a trust. Or at least, what looters call trusts. The idea is that Apple isn't promoting fair business because they're stifling competition because they're only selling to one company. The looters think that Apple should be required to sell to those that Apple doesn't want to do business with. So now there's a lawsuit against the two corporations.

What's wrong with this? Well, for starters, it kills competition. Wait... what? Try to follow my reasoning, if you don't already agree with me (which I'm sure a lot of you sane TTI members already do).

Apple creates a product - a touch activated smart phone that has millions of apps on iTunes. It has tons of features including internet capabilities, the ability to tilt sideways and be complete awesomesauce, and store your music. Only one company offers iPhone support for sale, and that is AT&T. But what if you don't like AT&T? Well, that doesn't matter. If you want an iPhone, you must buy it's service from AT&T.

So where's the competition? Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce the Droid into the conversation. The Droid has millions of apps on its online store. It has internet capabilities. It has a full QWERTY keyboard. It stores your music. It goes from vertical to horizontal. It has all of the capabilities of the iPhone without the iPhone namebrand, however it DOES have Google's namebrand. And best of all, its not offered by AT&T. If you want a kickass smart phone and you don't want to buy from AT&T, you can buy the Droid from Verizon.

Now, if this "trust" of AT&T gets destroyed, what will happen to the Droid? Well, I can't say for sure because I'm not a mystical fortune-teller, huddled around a pretty crystal ball chanting "hummina hummina hummina," but I can logically come to the conclusion that the Droid will become irrelevant.

iPhone, again has name recognition. Droid isn't culturally established like iPod, iPhone, iTunes, iMac, etc. The iPhone is infinitely more culturally popular than the Droid. If iPhone would be sold by Motorola, people will see both the Droid and the iPhone, take the Apple name-brand choice, and noone will buy the Droid. THIS is the stifling of competition.

So, this attempt at breaking up a trust to "remove monopolies and boost competition" will not boost competition. It will kill it.

/end rant

Your conclusion is basically correct but your means are not and you basically digged yourself into a hole.

The standard of good in free market is not "is competition promoted or not?"

Competition is an effect not the cause. The cause is freedom and laws that protect that freedom, i.e. individual rights. So you can't judge anything by looking if competition is "promoted" or not.

Otherwise, you dig yourself into a hole like you did above, and it just doesn't sound kosher. If competition is your standard than any situation with one strong competitor is defacto under suspicion.

And that is plain wrong. If there is only one major company in any industry in free market, then it is because that company is awesomely productive and should be praised for it, not looked upon with a weird eye because "competition" is suddently under a possible threat.

I don't like the iphone just because it's with att. I like android because it does more and there are more free apps. If iphone moves to another service I will still prefer the android phones. This negates your argument that the iphone is infinately more popular and I'm sure I'm not the only one that prefers android over the iphone.

Hieder wrote:I don't like the iphone just because it's with att. I like android because it does more and there are more free apps. If iphone moves to another service I will still prefer the android phones. This negates your argument that the iphone is infinately more popular and I'm sure I'm not the only one that prefers android over the iphone.

I happen to prefer Android on it's merits, many of which involve choices. Choice of device, choice of maufacturer, choice of carrier. Every major carrier in the US has Android phones, most from multiple manufacturers. It's laughable on it's face to consider Apple and the iPhone to be some type of monopoly, when it's currently 4th in sales growth, behind Symbian, RIM's Blackberry, and Android. On a feature comparison of the OS and Apps, I'm hard-pressed to name any feature that the iPhone platform has that Android lacks, yet there are some substantial examples of the reverse which are often due to idealogical limitations imposed by Apple or AT&T. Being a single device on a single carrier made by a single company does not make iPhone the only option in it's market.

Many people don't know Android has been around more than 2 years in the consumer smartphone market because comparable marketing funding didn't begin until Verizon began their "Droid Does" campaign at the end of 2009 when the Android platform hit version 2.0. Apple's marketing has always been very successful at fostering widespread brand recognition, although consumer adoption is often nowhere near the rate of recognition. In the PC market, most people are aware of Apple's computer products although they actually represent a small market share. Same goes for phones, everybody is aware of the iPhone, but in actuality it has a very small market share. And it's currently growing at a smaller rate than it's competitors in what seems to be the critical mass-adoption period of this particular consumer market.

Apple traditionally has shown to favor product control over market share. This is their right, and it's the consumer's right to buy something else. There are several options and Android is a very viable one, and for me a clearly preferable one. Apple has a history of creating products that people want to have and use, then rigidly trying to control how they are used, while competitors work to integrate the popular features into their own products and subsequently overtake Apple in market share.

With Android I can install signed or unsigned software from any source and avoid having a single company dictate what software is available to me. It is a fully asynchronous, multitasking, multithreaded, multitouch, protected memory OS purpose-built with open source code for mobile devices that I do not have to pay a fee to buy or develop applications for or wait for arbitrary approval to distribute. Because of this environment I have applications available that iPhone does not, such as the ability to use the Adobe Flash browser plugin or the mobile version of Firefox. The Android graphic user interface is every bit as polished and feature-complete as IOS and offers all the amenities of motion sensing, haptic feedback, multitouch, swiping, tapping, gestures, audio, and video. Android in some technical ways has been more advanced than IOS for some time, including features such as copy/paste and application multitasking well before they were available on the iPhone.

As for Apple's App store, in late 2009 it was passing 100k apps, which is where the Android Market is now. I've looked at apps in both stores, and most of it is crap. It's not about quantity, it's about having the quality in the core apps that provide functionality that's actually useful. Both markets are now pretty mature in that regard and have multiple options for all core apps, although in some cases Apple's offerings are limited or nonexistent if the specific functionality is something Apple or AT&T don't want users to have.

Imagine if Apple opened IOS to any and all device manufacturers and carriers, and allowed any application to run on it instead of imposing somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent approval requirements for developers to create and distribute software. They just don't do things that way. Android does.

Some stats on relevant current sales data here: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1421013

People are funny about their personal devices and emotions get involved. Apple is a leader at marketing in this regard. My dad is an Apple developer and has an iPhone. My Aunt bought the first model iPhone with the full knowledge that AT&T has no coverage where she lives and has upgraded to each new model although she still can't make or receive calls in her own home. I don't even try to convert the evangelistic, but I do have multiple iPhone-owning friends that have opted to switch to Android as their AT&T contracts expire. I've noticed that people seem to be more likely to want or buy an iPhone with no experience using one than they are to consider Android, but people who get hands-on experience with an Android version 2.2 phone seem more likely to want or buy Android. An additional factor is that where I live Verizon rather completely dominates for network quality and coverage and AT&T has particularly poor coverage. Choice is good.