Randall Stephenson, head honcho of AT&T raises questions of prior LSD use by standing up in front of a crowd at the Mobile World Congress and saying that the iPhone App Store is bad for consumers. He suggested that cell carriers should sell apps to customers and they should all be written using HTML5. An idiotic statement like that is most assuredly the result of an acid flashback.
The Wholesale Applications Community (aptly named WAC) is a consortium of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. By their way of thinking, apps should be universal and run on all mobile operating systems. Sounds good in theory, but has that ever worked anywhere?...for anything? Isn't that what Java was supposed to do? The problem with universal code is that everything has to be coded to the lowest common denominator to be certain it works everywhere. The result is slow, crappy apps that run equally terribly on everything you install them on.
I think this is just a play for the cell providers to try and divert the flood of money flowing into the Apple App Store and the Android Marketplace. Why? Because the cell companies aren't getting a cut! I say TO HELL WITH THEM! They tried selling their own apps. Remember that? Before Apple broke their backs by telling AT&T how things were going to be if they were to get iPhone exclusivity, consumers paid through the nose for even the simplest of apps for their phones. We couldn't watch YouTube. We had to view video through the cell carriers' portals and got charged through the nose for airtime. We paid $18.99 for weather apps we now get for free. Apple and Google have liberated us from that kind of cell provider tyranny. Tell me Mr. Stephenson, how is that bad for us?
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 11:04PM 
First there was the Dell Streak, next the Samsung Galaxy Tab and now there’s the Motorola Xoom. All these “me too” offerings are trying to knock the iPad off its perch as the industry-leading (80% + market share) tablet. I won’t even mention the HP Slate or RIM Playbook because there doesn’t seem to be a way to purchase either one just yet.
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