Verizon, Sprint Looking To China For Handsets
We've been predicting this for quite some time now, but it looks like carriers really are looking to go straight to Chinese ODMs to design phones specifically for them. Both Sprint and Verizon now say they're looking to Chinese ODMs to produce phones for them, saying they've been impressed with what they've seen. What this shows is that the carriers are getting serious serious about completely taking away the customer ownership issue from the handset makers by working with providers who don't care about customer ownership. While the higher end phones still will come branded by the device makers, keep an eye out to see how much of the lower end is eaten away by no-name manufacturers providing carrier-branded phones. We've already seen stage one of the response by the big handset makers: they're all trying to come up with more distinctive phones, which will generate attention in their own way -- hopefully (for the handset makers) driving end-user demand for the specific phone over the carrier.
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