Google ’s announcement earlier this month that it would be launching its own cellphone sound overhaul was n’t perhaps a total shock — rumour that the company would enter the newsboy market have been about for some sentence , and the Mountain View giant has already made inroad in home broadband withGoogle Fiber .
But that got me thinking : If Google can rove out its own cellular net , then what ’s to stop Apple ?
The case for
I can recall ofa few reasonsthat Apple would be tempt to set up its own roving virtual mesh hustler ( MVNO ) , but the override one is philosophical . Apple ’s a fellowship that notoriously likes to controleverythingrelated to its commercial enterprise . In its earliest days , that meant creating both hardware and computer software to work an integrated whole , but in late age , that ’s progressively mean the whole shebang . A to Z. Soup to nuts . I mean , this is a party that hiredmetallurgistsfor the Apple Watch , induct heavily in a ( now mostly defunct ) firm to make sapphire Methedrine , and , of course , launched its own enormously successful retail fund in an era when that seemed like pure imbecility .
Nowadays , the iPhone is the biggest glob of Apple ’s business by far , and the carrier experience is in act the biggest part ofthatnot under Apple ’s unmediated control . That experience can also vary widely from carrier to carrier , withfeatures that do n’t exploit on one web or another , no doubt bring home the bacon a level of foiling for a company that is focused on presenting a unified front to its customers .
Should Apple examine its own Project Fi ?
manipulate the web would open up a tidy sum of possibilities for Apple . They ’ve been down this road before with technologies like iMessage . Sure , the iPhone could receive and send schoolbook and multimedia system messages before iMessage ’s launch , but by wreak the feature under its own control , Apple could modernize feature film not support by SMS : delivery and read receipt , audio messages , and so on . An Apple internet could , for exemplar , swear only on data , routing vox calls over FaceTime Audio by nonremittal . This is the kind of affair that raises the ire of those who believe everything in technology should be an interoperable open standard , but it ’s also the experience that Apple ’s customers assay out .
Apple also has the advantage of a circumscribed product line . Google ’s launch Project Fi with support only for its own Nexus 6 , but give the many third - party Android phone makers , it seems probable that will expand . Apple , on the other hand , need only support the iPhone — mayhap even just a newer model , if it launched the electronic web alongside a Cartesian product release . That means it could fine - tune performance and capabilities to the iPhone itself .
And let ’s also keep in mind Tim Cook ’s favorite metric : customer satisfaction . Very few phratry are enthusiastic about their wireless carriers , and on juncture that bleeds over to their phones . So I imagine it must be galling for poor Tim and Co. to get word complaint about poor service and slow stop number when the problems lie with the avail , not the equipment . ( Not to justify Apple of problem in those areas . )
The case against
You know , I ’m almost pop to blab out myself into this being a dandy idea . But even with all of the element in favour of Apple set up its own cell phone serving , I think it unlikely , for a few reasons .
Verizon and AT&T plausibly would n’t be eager to stop selling iPhones in their stores .
Google ’s internet , in an unprecedented move , is in reality ground on both T - Mobile and Sprint ’s towers , along with bread and butter for Wi - Fi career — the scheme mechanically detects which is the warm signal , and switch your phone to that . I ’d guess that an Apple MVNO would do something similar . But no matter how good T - Mobile and Sprint are , they ’re still the smallest of the big four networks . Without access code to Verizon and AT&T ’s pillar , Apple still loses out on a wad of reach , specially in less populated domain . And the large two are much less likely to make these mountain , because they have far more to lose than the smaller players do .
Apple would also potentially then lose access to the carriers ’ retail locations . And while this years of Apple Stores and online shopping means that hurt less than it used to , keep in brain that there are more than 2300 Verizon stores and 2200 AT&T stores throughout the U.S. , compared to 265 Apple Stores . And that does n’t even take into account all those pass dealer , mall kiosks , and third - party locations . Granted , Apple Stores tend to have select locating , especially for the segment of the market place Apple aims at , but there are plenty of folks who are n’t go to buy a telephone set sight unobserved and ca n’t easily gain an Apple Store .
There ’s also the consequence of outside funding . In the most late quarter , Apple postedhuge maturation in Chinaand good melioration in the rest of the Asia - Pacific . But the iPhone ’s available in dozen of countries , and if Apple want to bring its own immune carrier experience to the balance of the man , it would have to renegociate its deals in all of those rural area . Which is not to say it could n’t only perplex to the U.S. and selected other countries , as it ’s done with services like iTunes Match , but it kind of fly in the face of that very idea of “ a unified front . ”
Plus , some of the characteristic Google ’s roll out with Project Fi are n’t ones that Apple needs . For instance , Google touts the power to “ use your phone turn with tablet and laptops too ” receive your schoolbook message and call on non - cellular devices . Apple already offers similar functionality with itsContinuity features .
Apple ’s track disc with swarm service is n’t exactly on par with Google ’s .
in conclusion , to me , there ’s the elephant in the room : Apple ’s account with services . The caller ’s record when it comes to service is unreliable at best , with snafus for MobileMe , iCloud , the fresh Photos Library , and even the usually stable iTunes Store . I do n’t scrap that Apple could improve if it invested in natural endowment there the same way it did in other sector where it did n’t have expertness , but it ’s initiate from a position of disadvantage .
Suspended sentence
None of these obstacle make becoming a attack aircraft carrier insufferable , but all of them point to the diaphanous complexness of the fellowship expanding to fill this kind of part . It ’s certainly not something that happens overnight .
Still , if there ’s a metre to do it , that time might be now . Much like thevideo content market , the wireless diligence is running right into a period of upheaval , as people shift increasinglyfrom part to data , the small carrier like T - Mobile keep trying to chip aside at the larger one , and hoi polloi just take more from their wireless serving .
Somewhere at Apple , I ’m certain this idea has been discourse , excogitate over , and examine from every angle . But we may have to see how Project Fi does before Cupertino make up one’s mind whether or not the time is good to enter the thorny world of cellular serve .
