EXCLUSIVE: AT&T neuters the BlackBerry 8820 in favor of the iPhone
Wow. I must say, this is probably the biggest piece of news we've ever broken here at BlackBerry Cool — and possibly the one that's made us the angriest. We've just received word from one of our friends inside AT&T …
Context & Ripple Effects
AT&T spent May 2007 openly positioning itself as Apple's exclusive carrier, with coverage framing the iPhone as its iWeapon ahead of the June launch. By July, customer-satisfaction reports confirmed the phone was pulling buyers from rival carriers and handset makers — meaning AT&T now sells both the hottest device in the market and the enterprise BlackBerry lineup it suddenly has reason to disfavor.
Against that backdrop, BlackBerry Cool reports — citing a single unnamed insider at AT&T — that the carrier will ship the BlackBerry 8820 with features restricted to protect the iPhone. No other outlet picked up the claim, and AT&T has not confirmed it, so this remains a rumor rather than established policy; but it lands one day after a confirmed second class-action suit against Apple and AT&T over undisclosed iPhone battery-replacement fees, adding to a stretch of scrutiny around how the exclusivity deal treats customers.
First-order effects
- If the insider report proves accurate, AT&T's enterprise customers lose access to the 8820's full feature set precisely when the same carrier is marketing the iPhone to them — making RIM's flagship distribution channel a competitive liability for the device.
- RIM's relationship with its largest US carrier partner shifts from neutral retailer to interested gatekeeper, since every 8820 sold crippled reflects a deliberate choice rather than a hardware limitation.
Second-order effects
- Business buyers who want an unrestricted BlackBerry can route activations through rival carriers, taking high-value enterprise data plans off AT&T's books and giving competitors an easy pitch against the iPhone exclusivity.
- RIM faces pressure to extract written feature-parity commitments from AT&T or prioritize carriers without a conflicting exclusive, changing how it sequences US launches.
Third-order effects
- If exclusivity holders can quietly degrade rival handsets, device makers' feature decisions migrate from their own roadmaps into carrier contracts — the pattern regulators and class-action lawyers are already probing elsewhere in the Apple–AT&T relationship.
The trend: Carrier exclusivity deals like AT&T's iPhone arrangement are starting to dictate not just which phones get marketed but how competing devices on the same network are configured and sold.