Now who will be the first to buy a carrier, Apple or Google? Sprint market cap is just over $10B (up 8.75% today).
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None of them. If anything, Microsoft will become a soft carrier, followed quickly by Apple, then Google. Here are some thoughts I had on that a few months ago: http://fury.com/2011...
- Kevin Fox
Someone please. That's where we need real disruption.
- Todd Hoff
Realistically, no carrier has first-class coverage everywhere, and neither Apple or Google would tie their own product image to a single carrier's coverage area (again). Everyone's learned by watching the love/hate relationship users have with Apple and AT&T the past four years. No way they hobble themselves to a single physical infrastructure.
- Kevin Fox
Buying a carrier doesn't mean that they couldn't still sell phones on the other carriers and more than buying Motorola precludes them from putting Android on Samsung devices.
- Paul Buchheit
Would SprintApple still sell Android and Windows phones?
- Kevin Fox
Carriers are so much about commoditized physical infrastructure that I'd have to believe Apple is looking for a way to make them obsolete, rather than buying one for themselves.
- Kevin Fox
Amazon? -- Since they're already using Sprint for the Kindle. Might also make for some interesting Twilio-style additions to AWS
- Ken Sheppardson
Amazon no longer uses Sprint for the Kindle. It uses AT&T. It was the only way to get global coverage.
- Piaw Na
Aha. Got it. Meaning the newer K3 (and K2?) use AT&T? Y'know given the differing radio/network technologies, I wonder if anybody'd want Sprint, with all the inherent coverage limitations.
- Ken Sheppardson
If Amazon would build a pneumatic tube delivery service underneath everyone's homes and businesses (to replace FedEx/UPS/OnTrac), they could also put Wi-Max or LTE in their tubes, so that the Internet would actually be a series of tubes.
- Amit Patel
Tubes have been replaced with solar powered automated driving delivery vehicles. Not quite as romantic, or com friendly, but it uses the existing road system.
- Todd Hoff
I don't think Apple wants any part of a deal to buy plumbing. If they can cover that plumbing in gold plate and sell it as an experience, then maybe. Microsoft, on the other hand, has plenty of cash and doesn't mind being a plumber.
- Eric @ CS Techcast
Trucks? Tubes? Pfft... Autonomous solar-powered drones that dock at giant floating fulfillment center airships are the way to go. Get around the whole state-by-state tax problem once and for all. Just float over them.
- Ken Sheppardson
Ooh, delivery by airdrop. I like it.
- Amit Patel
Plus you tie this in with an app on your Android device and you'd get a little alert that says "You're package is available for delivery... please step outside"... BAM
- Ken Sheppardson
Airspace tax zones would be sure to follow :-) And I think the economics of lifting goods into the air will have to wait for zero-point energy devices.
- Todd Hoff
Lifting goods is cheap on the space pulley. You put a chunk of asteroid on one side and you put a container of goods on the other side. Make sure the asteroid is heavier, and it will go down as the goods go up. You extract the precious metals out of the asteroid and use that money to fund development of your delivery spacecraft, which is orbiting the Earth at supersonic speeds, picking up goods from the space pulley and releasing them at just the right time to hit Ken on the head.
- Amit Patel
I figure eventually they'll just have fab plants on the moon. Solar power turns moon rocks into whatever you need, and the end products get railgunned out of the moon's gravity well and fall straight to your home with a guided descent with last-minute parachute braking. The fun part is that your Amazon Prime cutoff time will be dependent on the moon's relative position to you, so it will gradually shift an entire day every 28 days. Don't get me started on the 28-day pricing cycle (goods cost less to produce when the Amazon moon base is in sunlight, and the Amazon Far Side solar array and trans-lunar cables aren't due to come online for another 3 years).
- Kevin Fox
Since this conversation looks to be officially derailed, I vote for some form of Wonka-Vision to be the distribution method of choice for Amazon prime...
- Ross Miller
That or skyhooks.
- Kevin Fox
Until I parsed "Sprint" I was sure you are talking about the actual warship, you know, Invincible class carrier is now supposedly on closed auction in UK :)
- Michael Bravo
Well, yeah, I guess that ties in with the Amazon sub-thread nicely. They probably are the most likely to be the first to buy a carrier, e.g. http://bit.ly/g55NKr
- Ken Sheppardson
Although as far as sub-threads go, this'd probably be more appropriate: http://bit.ly/rjNj0i
- Ken Sheppardson
The first thought that came into my head was "Aircraft Carrier" to use as a Datacenter...
- Stuart Woodward