Comment by dangus
I think this isn’t true at all, before the iPhone existed cellular carriers controlled software on consumer phones.
Remember when GPS navigation was a $5/month app that was a cellular plan addon?
I think this isn’t true at all, before the iPhone existed cellular carriers controlled software on consumer phones.
Remember when GPS navigation was a $5/month app that was a cellular plan addon?
Only phones sold by carriers were controlled by carriers. You could easily (in Europe at least) buy an unlocked phone and put in a SIM from any carrier of your choice. You could then easily install (i.e. "sideload") Java apps from anywhere you wanted, e.g. from a storage card or over Bluetooth, although some permissions were restricted unless you bought an expensive code-signing certificate.