AT&T wants a Symbian iPhone? Are you kidding me?

Man, would I have loved to be in the crowd at the Symbian Partner Conference when AT&T’s Director of Next Generation Services, Roger Smith, stated the telecom’s lofty goal of having the company’s smartphone offerings on the same operating system. You know what is coming: he said Symbian is “a very credible and likely candidate” to become that one operating system.

Symbian who?

Symbian, which garners 45% or so of the worldwide smartphone OS market, owes much of its success to Nokia. The platform is stable, works well, and is loved in Europe. As of late, Symbian was purchased by Nokia and is committed to going open source.

iPhone effect

Other news this morning from Bloomberg states Apple’s iPhone is recession-proofing AT&T thanks the steady line of new customers for the device. The company is expected to be the only carrier to post accelerating growth this quarter as companies hunker down for the economic storm. While AT&T has announced layoffs, subscribers are not detered from obtaining these luxury phones.

“People still want those iconic devices and are willing to pay up for them,” said Will Power, analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co.. “Look at wireless and consumer behavior generally, this also applies to the lower- income demographics.”

Additionally, iPhone buyers are among the industry’s most wanted customers, those that pay 1.6 times what the average customer pays for phone and data services. In a time where carriers are running out of new customers, they are looking to steal or hold onto these higher-paying customers.

Sucking up?

Perhaps Mr. Smith was sucking up the Symbian crowd? Certainly a unified OS would make AT&T’s life easier. One OS to support would be a welcome task to AT&T’s customer support team who currently deal with Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Apple, and then the home brew jobs from Pantech, Samsung and lots more. Is it possible AT&T could narrow that list down to just one?

Perhaps, but at what cost? When you remove consumer choice, demand will typically lessen. Unless other carriers adopt similar rules (and who wants to be the first?), AT&T’s dream of one OS is just pie in the sky thinking.

Source: [Bloomberg]