Today I came across this fascinating article "
The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry" by Fred Vogelstein (WIRED Magazine: issue 16.02).
One interesting observation is how the introduction of iPhone changes the the wireless business model. In the past, carriers treated their networks as "precious resources", and handsets as "worthless commodities". The reason was "by subsidizing the purchase of cheap phones, carriers made it easier for new customers to sign up -- and get roped into long-term contracts that ensured a reliable revenue stream." During the past few months, however, iPhone has successfully attracted so many customers to AT&T, which reaps significant profit margins over it data services (as compared to the voice business). Carriers start to feel the need to change.
When people compare the US wireless market with the one in China, researchers and experts from China often call for some sort of regulation/deregulation (yet by far they have been unsuccessful to lobby the policy-makers) to break the monopoly, open the market and introduce more carriers and competions, for the benefit of the end users. The US market was always one typical example people would cite. Ironically, this time the US market is moving towards a situation where its Chinese counterpart was born with -- the carriers open their network to (almost) all cell phone manufacturers as long as they meets the national standard requirement.