Phone Giants to Sell Samsung Tablet PC
Samsung Electronics Co. has cut deals with Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T Inc. to carry its new Google-powered tablet computer, three people familiar with the matter said, a significant step as Samsung tries to take on Apple Inc.'s hot-selling iPad.
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung's Galaxy Tab had already surfaced as Verizon Wireless' tablet in late August; this report widens the picture, with three people familiar with the matter telling the Wall Street Journal that Sprint Nextel and AT&T will carry the Google-powered device too — though the carriers and Samsung have yet to confirm the deals themselves.
The stakes are Apple's iPad, which the Journal calls hot-selling, and the timing matters for Google as much as Samsung: days earlier, Google confirmed that Chrome OS stays focused on netbooks, with the company denying any tablet push — making Android the only Google platform positioned to ride carrier shelves into the tablet market.
First-order effects
- Samsung gains a three-carrier distribution footprint for its first tablet — assuming the reported deals hold — giving the Galaxy Tab retail reach at Verizon, Sprint and AT&T stores that no single-carrier launch would provide.
- The carriers each add an Android tablet SKU to their lineups heading into the holiday quarter, with Verizon and Sprint getting a device category they otherwise could not offer.
Second-order effects
- Apple now faces tablet competition distributed through rival carriers rather than one retail channel, raising pressure on how the iPad is priced and sold in the US market.
- Google gets a carrier-driven distribution path for Android onto tablets even while it publicly keeps Chrome OS pointed at netbooks, sharpening the internal split between its two operating systems.
Third-order effects
- If carrier subsidy economics migrate from smartphones to tablets, tablet distribution could consolidate around the phone giants' storefronts — a structural counterweight to Apple's own-channel model.
- A successful multi-carrier Android tablet would invite other handset makers to follow the same route, turning the tablet from an Apple-defined product into a contested carrier-shelf category.
The trend: Android device makers are attacking Apple's tablet lead through carrier breadth rather than hardware differentiation alone, with the phone operators becoming the decisive retail channel for post-iPad tablets.