AT&T to be “initial exclusive” US carrier for Windows Phone 7

October 1, 2010 | By Surur

Will AT&T be the exclusive US carrier for Windows Phone 7? In what will be rather unwelcome news for most Windows Phone 7 fans, the Wall Street Journal is claiming AT&T will be the “initial exclusive U.S. carrier” for phones running the new OS.

Apparently this exclusivity is tied up with “marketing support” from AT&T, something that has been very successful for Motorola and Android on Verizon with the Droid campaign.

On the other hand the Droid campaign only amplified the message with consumers that Verizon is awesome, with the carrier enjoying the highest satisfaction rates of all US carriers. Any campaign by AT&T will in fact have to work against the perception that the carrier is awful first before it can even come to advertising Windows phone 7, with the carrier sharing last place with T-Mobile.

With the carrier saturated with iPhone users one can also only speculate about the size of the potential market there.

This also casts some doubts over Microsoft’s claims regarding the reason for delayed CDMA availability, as it may have just been a convenient excuse for what would have been an exclusively GSM launch in any case.

Of course the statement could be wholly wrong – we do after all expect the HTC HD7 to show up on T-Mobile USA some time in November, so lets hope as usual it is some analyst jumping to conclusions.

What do our readers think of this news? Is AT&T exclusivity worth AT&T’s marketing muscle? Let us know below.

Via Infosyncworld and WMExperts.com

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged AT&T, rumour, windows phone 7

Melika

I know man. What is MS thinking? Haven't then seen how bad at&t has doomed the iPhone and Apple?

By the way, for future reference, the name is at&t and not AT&T. That is the actual way they spell it now after the Cingular merger. It is no longer AT&T. But who am I kidding anyway, your headline says "AT&T to 'initial exclusive' US carrier…", quality control is obviously not a priority for this site.
OOOO

i have been at&t customer for a decade. great company. tech blogs like to scream about nothing. ive never had problems. theyre great.
JohnDoe

Lol its an at&t exclusive until Tmobile launches there handsets a month later then verizon and sprint next year.
Flo

quality control doesn't seem to be a priority for AT&T either… their website is littered with both ways, small caps as well as large caps. Similar, their official facebook site is AT&T…
GP007

This is pretty much spot on, AT&T will have a month or two lead on tmobile in the US, onoze! I expect Verizon and Sprint to have phones in Jan or Feb as well.
pinguino1

I like this site very much, except for their blind bias against at&t. Because this blog is anti at&t, they believe everyone is too. This is not the first time they go as far as conclusions of conspiracy. Of course they cover their …by saying " statement could be wholly wrong" after they already spill the beans.
http://twitter.com/MistaWet @MistaWet

If what you say is true John then I expect to hear a lot of WP7 users applauding At&T's service as opposed to what we hear now.
http://twitter.com/WMPerson @WMPerson

FUck ATT I guess its G2 for me till next year then.
snak

I'm a current at&t customer. My wife and i currently have flip phones (contract just expired). Wife wants an iPhone and I'm very much interested in WP7. Considering it will also be cheaper for me to stay with at&t (including the corporate discount I get), it's becoming a no-brainer. I had contemplated leaving, but I've never had any big problems so it works for me. Just a matter of deciding WHICH WP7 phone to go with.

Carrier bashing, in my view, is as pointless as OS bashing. To each their own. If it works for somebody who is anybody to say they're wrong?
Jonathan

So do we know what three phones will be available at launch? Any with a nice, big screen?
BCH

The article states: "On the other hand the Droid campaign only amplified the message with consumers that Verizon is awesome, with the carrier enjoying the highest satisfaction rates of all US carriers. Any campaign by AT&T will in fact have to work against the perception that the carrier is awful first before it can even come to advertising Windows phone 7…"

Why does not being first in customer satisfaction equal being "awful"? It's like arguing that the team that loses by a touchdown in the Super Bowl "sucks." Pretty pointless.

Been with at&t for years, and I have no complaints. Historically, they have also had the best hardware.
Danny

To me the larger problem is that it is the iPhone stronghold and, at least in the beginning, there is not going to be a huge market for switchers. Android got its feet under it by being the iPhone alternative on Verizon and it has been a spectacular success so I think it is bizarre that MS is going this route. They would have been much better off being the cool alternative somewhere else first while the OS builds mindshare as Android as done.

The part about the marketing support is particularly absurd. MS has nearly $40 Bn in the bank, if they went with AT&T just to save a few million dollars than I'm worried that their tradition of half-assed maneuvers in the mobile space isn't over after all.
http://wmpoweruser.com wmpoweruser

Well, being in the UK, I have no skin in the game, but the Changewave survey linked says twice as many people were "very satisfied" with Verizon than AT&T, and that AT&T dropped 3 times as many calls as Verizon, so its not exactly close.
j2inet

Wasn't AT&T also the first GSM carrier with WM6.5 devices in the USA?
jfa112851

I like John Bascom have been with ATT and Cingular for over a decade and the only phones I have had serious issues with ATT service have been phones with bad batteries like the Treo 600 or areas where all cell fones have had spotty service (in rural Arkansas).
jfa112851

you are correct
efjay

In the rush to bash at&t maybe we are overlooking the fact that maybe at&t was the only carrier willing to take on WP7 at launch? All other US carriers have seemingly sold their soul to google and are pumping android handsets out like they were going extinct, could it be none of them were willing to support the launch with a large marketing campaign that would jeopardise their position with google or threaten their android offerings?

How much attention did the HD2, still the best WM handset available, get from T-Mobile prior to its launch? No preorder, no advertising and practically no support and allegedly sales people are now advising against buying the HD2 in favour of an android handset. Not to mention verizon with their droid brand and sprint with their 4G labelling. Throw in the fact that at&t is actually the largest GSM carrier in the US and it makes perfect sense for them to be first, and even though I am on t-mobile the response I have got from actual at&t users is that their service is actually pretty good. So maybe we should wait and see before we start wailing and lamenting the fact that at&t will get exclusivity for the WP7 launch.
http://twitter.com/AaronCT123 @AaronCT123

All those drops were probably iPhones. I've never really had any calls drop that I can think of under normal circumstances
http://twitter.com/AaronCT123 @AaronCT123

Yea, they have the money. The marketing thing definitely doesn't any sense. However, if I'm not mistaken at&t is the carrier with the most actual users so it's not exactly horrible to want to make sure you hit them up. And, contrary to popular belief not everyone has an iPhone and a lot of people, like myself, don't even have true smartphones yet
http://twitter.com/AaronCT123 @AaronCT123

To be fair, the HD2 was limited by software, but your point is completely valid and extremely well thought out
techSage

They could just market it on their own, but it seems smarter to have more than just them saying that the phones are good via marketing.
chinch

What smartphone platform would YOU recommend US carriers "pump out" instead of android devices? ROTFMLAO were there any alternates in the last year now for those carriers locked out of iPhone.

Carriers NEED devices to SELL THEIR SERVICES. They would all gladly take on WP7 day 1 however that is not happening due to whatever mind-boggling microsoft made.
bch

Why does nobody mention that you can't use voice and data simultaneously on Verizon? That is a massive disadvantage, as far as I'm concerned.