Apple, the iPhone and AT&T has been in the news a lot lately and most of the news aren’t good at all. The recent pull out of Google Voice (a great service that I hope I’d see getting available in the Philippines) from the Apple App Store has finally put a nail in the coffin for Michael Arrington to dump his iPhone/AT&T service. He’s not the first of the web’s popular figures to do so. For instance, GigaOM’s Om Malik has also decided to stop using his iPhone . Continue reading …

Well, well, AT&T is joining the Android bandwagon after all with the HTC Lancaster. I’ve read from Engadget that AT&T’s very own Android based mobile phone is in the works. The HTC Lancaster will have a physical keyboard, , triband EDGE and 850 / 1900MHz HSPA, AGPS, a 3 megapixel fixed-focus camera, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD expansion, and a “unique HTC social messaging user interface”

It’s lined up for a full six months of AT&T exclusivity and — according to materials gotten by Engadget target availability date is August 3. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

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AppleInsider is reporting that talks between Apple and AT & T are in the works for AT & T to maintain its exclusivity on the iPhone up to 2011. Although AT & T is subsidizing the iPhone to probably the tune of $1.3 billion to date, the estimated 4 million users paying $60 per month coming into 2009 will be producing another quarter of a billion dollars in subscription income. This is above what AT&T is getting from all those voice calls over the free voice call minutes from the millions of iPhone users.

If the current growth of US iPhone users continue to increase AT & T will continue to rake in those communication dollars going into 2010 when the US carriers will start implementing network upgrades that will use the LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology. I’m pretting excited with the technology since it’s a truly IP connected phone that people will be using when that happens.