The Android Dev Phone 1

Posted Dec 30, 2008 14:11 UTC (Tue) by ikm (guest, #493)
In reply to: The Android Dev Phone 1 by nedrichards
Parent article: The Android Dev Phone 1

Normal companies have the sole interest of selling their phones and that's it. By contrast, Google doesn't really have any direct interest in selling phones, as this company's real business is centered around data mining. So while the normal company's interests end after I've bought their phone, with Google, its interests only start there.

Hmm... Why told you these lies?

Posted Dec 31, 2008 0:03 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

Normal companies have the sole interest of selling their phones and that's it.

Sorry, but that's not true today - was not true for many years. Phone is commodity, they can not get good money out of it. Ringtones, Wallpapers and yes, information about your habits (it can be sold to advertisers) make the difference. Symbian-based phone suppliers often go much further then G1 (let alone "The Android Dev Phone 1")...

Hmm... Why told you these lies?

Posted Dec 31, 2008 0:27 UTC (Wed) by ikm (guest, #493) [Link] (1 responses)

Much further how? What I usually see is just some online stores' apps/links, N-Gage games, stuff like that, and all that looks quite innocent to me. No mother ships, no compulsory account creations, no nothing. Sure some service providers make branded versions with locked-out features, messed up firmware, make people grumpy -- not cool, but I'm talking about the normal, unbranded phones.

Hmm... Why told you these lies?

Posted Dec 31, 2008 5:30 UTC (Wed) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

The un-branded phones are where cell companies lose money on. So they are focused on less and less. The way that they profit is by adding in the various mothership items to sell information about habits to other groups.