When Apple announced that the MMS feature of the iPhone 3.0 software would NOT be available to owners of 2G iPhones, it set a bit of a precedent. What exactly was that?
Well, it was the FIRST time that a pure software function has been held back from users of older generation iPhones.
In the 3 years of iPhone existence, there has been several major software upgrades. In all cases, unless the new feature was tied to new hardware (3G, GPS, etc) the capability was made available to older devices.
But now for 3.0, no MMS for 2G phones. Why? It's clear that it is not hardware related, MMS is a simple, well understood capability in mobile phones and places no significant demands on the OS or hardware. The 2G is clearly up to the task. And keeping the phones in the Apple ecosystem (and buying apps) is clearly a win for Apple.
So why? Here are some guesses:
1) Apple wants to start to move these users to new phones. Although users of 2G phones buy apps and drive revenue, Apple IS a hardware company, and wants to sell new phones.
2) ATT wants to keep EDGE traffic as low as possible. MMS sends attached images over the data network. EDGE is much less efficient with spectrum than 3G. Maybe the network guys got involved.
3) The conspiracy theory. Lots of 2G iPhones are jail broken and on other networks. Enabling MMS in 2G phones would allows 2G owners on T-Mobile (gasp!) to have MMS BEFORE new users on ATT. How embarrassing.
My head tells me the reason is a mix of 1 and 2, but I'd like to think it's 3. That's just me. You?
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