Following up on last year’s Wall Street Journal report, AT&T announced plans to sell Android powered smartphones by the second half of this year, including the Dell Mini 3i. The carrier also said that it’s expecting to sell five new devices from manufacturers that include Motorola and HTC.
This announcement makes AT&T the last major wireless carrier in the US to add an Android smartphones to its portfolio.
“AT&T needs another leg to stand on beyond the iPhone, which has been this pillar of strength for the company,” said Roger Entner, Nielsen telecommunications analyst.
Recently, iPhone customers have been criticizing the carrier for delayed text and voice messages and slow download speeds. It will be interesting to see how they react to these problems, considering that Android users will also use up a lot of network resources.
AT&T is no slouch when it comes to handset offerings. Besides being a superior marketing and sales vehicle for iPhone, AT&T has attracted customers from almost every economic background with the different manufacturers they represent and the services they offer. It was only a matter of time before Android was added to their portfolio. And I doubt they’ll lose much steam, even taking into consideration the year-long jump-start Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have had on the Android market. We should probably also see Palm and WebOS on AT&Ts radar in the next coming months as well, given Verizon’s recent announcements with the soon-to-be availability of the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. (www.att.com)
