AT&T's Chief Marketing Officer on How the Company Has Found (Android) Religion
Although AT&T has dabbled with Android in the past, the carrier is now dead serious about making sure that it has a range of products running Google's operating system. — While many will observe …
Context & Ripple Effects
AT&T spent 2009 publicly wrestling with its Apple dependence — first its chief executive's push to keep the iPhone (Wall Street Journal reporting on that effort), then signals that the exclusive arrangement was weakening (the 'fuzzy signal' on the iPhone) — while Verizon had been courting Google's OS since late 2007. A week ago the carrier's CEO laid out its smartphone-war position at length (his January 2011 interview), and days later AT&T was airing an 'Answer' TV spot touting HSPA phones' ability to talk and surf simultaneously against Verizon's new iPhone.
The CMO's declaration that AT&T is 'dead serious' about a full range of Android devices converts that defensive posture into an explicit portfolio strategy: with Verizon now selling the iPhone too, neither carrier can differentiate on OS exclusivity anymore, so breadth of devices becomes the competitive lever.
First-order effects
- Android handset makers gain a committed second national US shelf beside Verizon's, widening distribution for a portfolio AT&T previously dabbled in only at the margins.
- Apple loses its last structural advantage at AT&T — scarcity of alternatives — just as the carrier's own marketing pivots to attacking Verizon's iPhone on network capability.
Second-order effects
- With both top carriers stocking iOS and Android alike, differentiation shifts from which OS you carry to network features and device pricing — exactly the terrain AT&T's simultaneous voice-and-data ad is fighting on.
- Google's Honeycomb tablet push, announced the same week, gets an eager carrier partner for extending Android beyond phones, pressuring rivals' tablet roadmaps.
Third-order effects
- Carrier OS allegiance dissolves into portfolio management: every major US operator ends up hedged across platforms, making Android the default volume play and exclusivity deals the exception rather than the rule.
The trend: US carriers are converging on dual-platform lineups where Android serves as the volume hedge against Apple, ending the era when a single exclusive handset defined a carrier's smartphone story.