If they'd really wanted to blow up the US wireless industry, Apple would have sold the iPhone entirely sim-free, just like the iPod. It would have made Americans realise they didn't have to buy their phones from any particular network, and also realise that they could use the same phone on many different networks just by swapping the SIM card. That really would have been a revolution.

However, all that would have denied Apple access to those "revenue streams", i.e. a huge chunk of our phone bills, so of course they got into bed with the network operators for the sake of $$$ rather than satisfied customers.

The iPhone's business model, which includes a share of phone bills, means that the handset manufacturer has an interest in keeping phone bills as high as possible for as long as possible. If this business model spreads, it may be extremely bad news for the consumer, as the handset makers and network operators might together conspire to lock people into phone contracts that are as long and expensive as possible.

The iPhone's business model is the equivalent of a car manufacturer getting a share of the money their customers spend on petrol. Would they care about fuel efficiency under those circumstances?

Most phone makers don't get a phone bill share, so they don't care what your phone bill is, and consequently are perfectly happy to add features like VOIP which actually reduce consumers' bills significantly. Once the phone manufactuers start getting a share of the bill though, they're not going to be anywhere near as keen on these kinds of money-saving features, because it will mean taking a hit on their own profits.

Even if Apple behaved immaculately, simply introducing such a business model is going to cause at least some manufacturers to behave less than immaculately, and turn the whole mobile phone business into an industry geared towards making phone use as expensive as possible. At the moment it's just the network operators who want phone bills to go up, but if they have the manufacturers on their side as well... then it's going to be a pretty bad situation.

cant even escape this phone on my favourite website of many many years. :rolleyes:

@krisse, so true. I'm Stateside, and I remember following that keynote as it happened. When the iPhone was announced, I thought here is a phone that will finally get us consumers out of the subsidized phone ghetto, get them to care about the unlocked market, and show manufacturers that it's more powerful to deal directly with us, first... and then Jobs brought up the whole AT&T deal, breaking my heart. The one company here that had the following and momemtum to penetrate the unpenetrable mess that is the US telecom industry chose to keep a status quo. How utterly disappointing.

Just close your eyes and think of fluffy bunny rabbits skipping through green meadows. You'll start feeling better.