Number of applications downloaded from the iPhone App Store
After hitting a historic 1 billion downloads, Apple says the store cleared another half a billion apps in the following three months.
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Well if verizon follows through with this, will that mean they'll be switching to GSM? or what? Does anyone know if it means any phone that meets their standards or strictly any CDMA phones or what.. This is great news but I don't really know how it would all go down... Anyone out there know anything about this or have a hunch about it..?
Get serious. They're not switching to GSM. They'd have to go around installing GSM equipment on every VZW tower to even begin to pull that off.
They're just going to allow phones from, say, Sprint, US Cellular, or Alltel to run on their network.
They have announced earlier this year that they are going to LTE, which is the the next Evolution of GSM. So yeah they are going to switch. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will implement SIM cards for access. We'll have to wait and see.
@Randy
You're right, they are eventually switching to LTE, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this "Any Apps, Any Device" announcement.
It just means that they'll allow devices with ESN's that they didn't sell to be added to their network.
Personally, I'm not just "not a verizon fan", I'm an anti-verizon fan... so this isn't directly important to me. The way it will matter to me is the effect it will have on the market. Sprint is already on its way to opening up its network (wasn't there a settlement a few weeks back?). So, two of the big 4 US carriers are now opening up to some extent.
How will this pressure the small CDMA carriers (especially MetroPCS)? How will this pressure the GSM carriers here (T-Mobile and AT&T being the big two)? If MetroPCS, T-Mobile, and AT&T become more open, then that's "all good" from my perspective.
"How will this pressure the GSM carriers here (T-Mobile and AT&T being the big two)?"
Umm, they're GSM carrier, they've always had the "Any Device carrier," but what makes it even better is your don't have to chose from a device that meets a "minimum technical standard." Just like their "unlimited" plan, it should be named "Any" device, accordingly: if it must meet a "minimum technical standard," then it must have been tested and preapproved, meaning just *any* device will not do.
Now, to the "Any App" section. I am not sure how this one will go, but it sounds like good news. But let's just hope that "Any App" you choose wouldn't pull too much bandwidth (assuming it requires the internet, of course) because your unlimited internet plan isn't too unlimited.
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Sounds nice, let's just hope it's implemented well.....it's VZW, so I'm naturally kinda skeptical, here.