"To hear the carriers tell it, the iPhone is a major inhibitor to their profits as last year they were “only” generating wireless service profit margins in the 38% to 42% range."<p>It would seem pretty simple then - stop carrying and supporting the iPhone, and they would have higher profit margins. This is basic math. If they want higher profit margins, drop iPhone.<p>Wait... what? They want higher profit margins <i>and</i> higher revenues? Perhaps those days are slipping away, and they may have to deal with higher revenues and 'only' 20% profit margins.<p>Uh oh - what if that happens? We'll stop seeing all the innovations from carriers we've seen over the past 20 years like...<p>Oh yeah, we haven't really seen any. SMS spam? That's been the only change in my wireless life I can directly attribute to wireless carriers, other than wireless service itself. Is there anything else I'm missing?
More BGR spam.<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577567283530764706.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044354550457756...</a>
This problem will solve itself (at least in europe) now that 'share your broadband and you can use other people's shared broadband connection' schemes are popping up everywhere.<p>The telco's have had a monopoly position for too long. The consumer does <i>not</i> care if his call is routed over the internet, skype, broadband or 3g, he just wants his connection, and wants it cheap.<p>Data limits and increased prices are not the way to solve this, evolving the infrastructure is.<p>And don't tell me they need to make huge investments. They've got a vastly automated infrastructure and millions of customers that they're leeching off monthly.
It is so frustrating that these carriers continue to have such a strong hold on customers. They are true monopolies and their desire to have their bottom lines raised is obviously more important than any type of innovation on the technology front. Eventually I think we'll see the same breakup/restrictions of these large carriers in the same way AT&T's land lines were done.