AT&T wants a single smartphone platform on its network; I wanna fly
By Dusan Belic on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 6:37 AM PST In AT&T, General
There’s no secret in the fact that multiple mobile platforms drive operators crazy, due to obvious support costs. However, I was kinda surprised that AT&T (NYSE: T) is thinking to actually do something radical about as part of their “dramatic consolidation” of mobile platforms over the next few years.
Speaking at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco, AT&T’s director of next generation services, Roger Smith, said that in that sense Symbian is “a very credible and likely candidate” to become operating system of choice for AT&T.
It’s important to add here that he was talking about completely AT&T-branded smartphones, not devices like the iPhone that may use AT&T’s network.
However, I still have hard time envisioning AT&T or any other major operator for that matter without BlackBerrys and some HTC devices in their portfolio. Not to mention all the Android devices we’ll certainly see unveiled during next year. Is AT&T ready to dump such big portion of the smartphone market? Or all they want is simply to outsource support to the manufacturers? It’s hard to say at this stage, but it’s a good thing they’re thinking about the future, no matter how weird their ideas are. 
Check out the full article on Yahoo News (from PC World).
That’s all well and good, except that AT&T insists on Castrating their S60 offerings. I just purchased the latest Nokia 6650 and the A&TT branding has made the phone almost useless, even going as far as adding a button to the keyboard that is tied to a pay only feature and then disabling the ability to remap the key or even remove the app. I love my unlocked S60 phone for its flexibility but the AT&T branding is a mess.
Hello friends at IntoMobile.
I attended the talk by Roger Smith at the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco. A lot of the bloggers and media misinterpreted some of what Roger said, IMHO.
I recorded the entire video to show on my site, Nokia Daily News. Here’s a link to the entire talk by Roger Smith : http://nseriesus.com/roger-smith-att
I didn’t attend the talk, but imagine part of the reason AT&T would get behind a platform such as Symbian is for the single fact it has the highest footprint of all smartphones.