The Sidekick is Dead. Long Live the Sidekick. T-Mobile Aims to Reinvent the Original Smartphone
Just a couple weeks after announcing plans to kill-off the old Danger-based Sidekick service, T-Mobile is ready with some details on its first Android-based model.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Sidekick was the original cloud phone — its identity lived on Microsoft-operated Danger servers, which is exactly what T-Mobile said on March 1 it will shut down, ending the platform that defined the brand (killing off the Danger servers). The writing had been visible since January, when T-Mobile confirmed a 4G version of the Sidekick alongside the Samsung Galaxy S 4G.
What changed with this report is the shape of the successor: rather than letting the brand die with its backend, T-Mobile is rebuilding the Sidekick on Android. That fits a strategy the carrier has pursued since at least 2008, when Android was flagged as its breakout bet (Why Android Will Soon Kick Ass) — and it comes with CEO Philipp Humm acknowledging that about 10% of departing subscribers leave monthly for AT&T because of the iPhone.
First-order effects
- Current Sidekick owners face a hard deadline: their devices' cloud features end when the Danger service shuts down, forcing a migration to Android handsets or another carrier.
- T-Mobile gains a recognizable branded Android device to anchor its lineup against the Verizon iPhone, addressing the churn Humm has attributed directly to Apple's handset.
Second-order effects
- Rivals selling keyboard-centric messaging phones — the segment the Sidekick helped create — now compete against the same heritage name running a mainstream OS, eroding whatever differentiation pure feature-phone messaging devices had left.
- Android consolidates its position as T-Mobile's default smartphone platform, concentrating the carrier's marketing and subsidy spend behind one ecosystem alongside the Galaxy S 4G and G-Slate.
Third-order effects
- Carrier-exclusive smartphone platforms are giving way to licensed OSes: iconic brands survive as hardware designs and software skins layered on Android rather than as proprietary cloud services.
- If the pattern holds, the value of a device brand shifts from operating the backend to designing for a shared platform — raising the bar for any operator considering maintaining its own phone stack.
The trend: Carrier-proprietary mobile platforms are being retired in favor of Android, with beloved device brands reborn as skins and hardware on a shared operating system.