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Only the EU can save Android in the US now (www.androidauthority.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

77 comments fedilink hide all child comments

TL;DR: Apple dominates the US smartphone market, but EU regulations may offer Android a chance for resurgence by enforcing messaging interoperability and standardizing hardware features.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was exactly the same in Europe in terms of fixed line vs mobile call prices and ultimate connectivity.

The difference is that any mobile phone (the actual device) that worked for any one carrier in Europe would work for any other carrier in Europe, and although that carriers did try to lock-in customers with contracts and even carrier subsidized network locked phones, it was still possible to change carriers (especially after supporting number portability was made mandatory) plus roaming just seamlessly worked when moving all around Europe (turning the potential problem of market fragmentation in Europe into a strength as rather than a handful of continent-wide carriers with spotty coverage in some places, in Europe local carriers focused on local coverage and access when outside your carrier's are was provided via some other carrier via roaming).

I remember the talk on the Internet at the time (I've had a mobile phone since the 90s) and how americans constantly complained of the need of different phones for different carriers and the uneveness of countrywide coverage, unlike in Europe were if you bought your own "mobile phone" it would just work with whatever carrier you chose.

(Mind you, carriers tried to lock-in customers with locked phones, which funilly enough resulted in the mushrooming of little stores which would unlock your phone, all perfectly legal).

And yeah, LTE was part of GSM v3, hence why I mentioned it as the point when the US finally standardized its mobile network.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't disagree with you about different network technologies being a hindrance, but I was focused on things that make an analog to why SMS is so much more entrenched in the US. Clearly not a perfect analogy was made. :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

SMS used to be really entrenched in the EU also ... and overly expensive (given that, at least at first, they were limited by the protocol to about 180 bytes).

However when data smartphones became more common and data speeds became decent (roughly by the time of GSM v3 and LTE) people kinda figured out that if even a shit data plan was (back then) 10 euros for 100MB, paying 10 cents for a message of 180 characters was really was the mobile phone providers taking the piss and started using messaging solutions that used their dataplan, not the GSM network SMS protocol.

All this happenned in the smartphone age, so beyond the time when mobile phone interoperability was a problem in the US but not in the EU.

The strange difference with the US in this, IMHO, is how Europe ended up with mobile phone independent solutions rather than phone specific ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I feel like you didn't read their whole initial comment and hyper focused on the analogy instead of what they were talking about. Their comment is literally about the difference between US and Europe and why they ended up with different solutions for messaging. (high SMS fees in Europe vs unlimited SMS in the US).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's probably true :/