Comment 1XR Re: GSM = Useless in Most of the US

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GSM = Useless in Most of the US (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-28 10:51 (#1XQ)

It's hard enough getting a decent CDMA data signal in most places (Sprint sucks balls), but deploying a flagship GSM-only phone for the US market is ridiculous.

Also, who the hell is this "T2Mobile" they plug throughout the release?

Re: GSM = Useless in Most of the US (Score: 2, Informative)

by alioth@pipedot.org on 2014-05-28 11:03 (#1XR)

Apple did that (deploy a GSM-only phone in the US - the first iPhone was GSM only) and was a wild success.

The problem is not whether they are using GSM/UMTS but that they are now against two fully entrenched platforms (iOS and Android) and several minor platforms (Windows Phone, Blackberry etc) and it's going to be difficult to enter with a new smart phone platform against all the entrenched competition. As such because their slice of the pie will never be anything other than tiny, it's probably best to develop the hardware for the most widely used world standard (GSM and its descendents) rather than a minority US-only standard.

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2014-05-28 18:20 Informative +1 bryan@pipedot.org

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