How many carriers have the iphone

Kickstarter Tumblr Art Club. Film TV Games. Fortnite Game of Thrones Books. Comics Music. Filed under: Apple Tech iPhone. Linkedin Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. The Verge Guide to the iPhone.

Show More. Sign up for the newsletter Verge Deals Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. Just one more thing! Please confirm your subscription to Verge Deals via the verification email we just sent you. Email required. As the iPhone becomes more wide-ranging, additional carriers that don't fit in the categories above are starting to offer it. These are often national carriers that target their services at specific markets or customers.

Some of the most prominent of these niche carriers are:. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance.

Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Sam Costello. Sam Costello has been writing about tech since His writing has appeared in publications such as CNN. Facebook Twitter. Updated on July 20, Tweet Share Email. In This Article. The involvement of third-party hardware makers further complicates Google's task with Android. It is possible, though difficult, for a software maker to take control of updates away from both phone manufacturers and carriers.

Microsoft pulled that trick off for a while, but Windows Phone's failure in the smartphone market meant that few customers benefited from Microsoft's smart decision. We said above that Apple's success in taking control away from carriers "didn't have much to do with the device itself.

Verizon was suddenly ready to negotiate. Though Verizon and Apple worked for six to nine months "on the technical side," it only took one day to negotiate the commercial terms of the deal, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said in an interview with Bloomberg in January Verizon had to agree not to put its own logo on the iPhone, which carries only Apple's logo, but "that wasn't a major issue for us," McAdam told Bloomberg.

Other carriers followed suit. Later in , Sprint committed to buying T-Mobile started selling the iPhone in , though it was already supporting 1. Apple took similar approaches abroad, initially awarding exclusive deals to carriers in O2 in the UK and T-Mobile in Germany , for example.

Just as in the US, other carriers would eventually get the iPhone, but Apple always retained control over software updates. Elsewhere, Apple has even developed its own multi-carrier SIM card for the iPad , making it easier for consumers to switch carriers and further reducing carriers' influence over devices that connect to cellular networks. Things proceeded much differently with Android, but the origin of Android's problem is clear: "Android was originally designed, above all else, to be widely adopted," we wrote in a article on Android's security update problem.

Google recognized early on that this created problems. Way back in , Google announced the Android Update Alliance, which would ensure that Android phones and tablets would receive updates for at least 18 months after their introduction. By , it was clear that this alliance with hardware makers and carriers didn't work out. Google's job is obviously much harder than Apple's because it has to work with third-party hardware makers in addition to network operators, whereas Apple controls both the hardware and software.

Instead of a single version of Android for all phones, there are various customizations made by hardware makers and apps preloaded by manufacturers and carriers. Hardware makers and carriers do their own compatibility testing before pushing out updates.

While there are just a few iPhones, there are many different models of Android devices that all get slightly different updates. But even when hardware makers have their custom versions of Android ready, the updates aren't pushed out simultaneously by each carrier.