AT&T CEO Whines About App Store, Wants to Sell Carrier Bloatware

Now that AT&T is no longer the exclusive provider of the iPhone, the telecom company’s CEO has taken the opportunity to speak out against Apple and the App Store.

In a keynote speech, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson at Mobile World Congress criticized the closed nature of the App Store, whose offerings are exclusive to Apple devices.

?You purchase an app for one operating system, and if you want it on another device or platform, you have to buy it again,? Stephenson said in a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress. ?That?s not how our customers expect to experience this environment.?

Stephenson’s suggestion? He wants carriers to have the ability to sell apps to customers directly through a channel called the Wholesale Applications Community, which serves software from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.

In other words, Stephenson wants carriers to have some control of the mobile software experience. He probably misses the good old days when telecoms told manufacturers what they wanted on their phone software ? before Steve Jobs negotiated for Apple to have complete control of the iPhone experience and blew up the wireless industry.

Cry me a river, AT&T.

Stephenson’s idea seems pretty self-serving for the telecoms. I don’t know anyone who misses expensive crapware made by carriers. I remember when I had a Motorola RAZR on Verizon, and there was a navigation app to get written directions from one location to another. The price? $10 per month. Absurd, and the demo was barely functional; Google later made the same service free with an SMS service. If telecoms did gain their own app channel on the iPhone and other smartphones, I’m betting nobody would be happy but the carriers.

From Loop Insight

Full story at http://feeds.wired.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/YXg4NBoSRo8/