Europe’s mobile phone service providers are apparently unhappy with the power Apple and Google seem to have in their market and are looking at ways to take that control back from the companies. France Telecom-Orange CEO, Stephane Richard, has gone so far as to call a meeting with other service providers to start working on a joint strategy, and possibly even an alternate mobile phone OS, according to Mobile Business Briefing.
Mr. Richard will be meeting with the top executives from Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Vodafone on October 8 to discuss the situation and strategize on ways to cut off Apple and Google from having direct relationships with mobile phone users and push them back into seeing service providers as their point of contact for product features.
Apple has been successful at changing how consumers view their smartphones along with how they interact with their cell service providers thanks to the iPhone, iOS and the App Store. Google is following in Apple’s footsteps with Android OS and its Android Marketplace.
The carriers are said to be considering creating their own mobile OS to compete with iOS and Android, and are also considering building a custom version of the Android OS, or possibly Symbian OS. Once they have a solution in place, the carriers will push their OS on handset makers.
Europe’s mobile phone service providers haven’t met yet, so there’s no word on when they may have their own OS in place. The fact that they’re planning on meeting, however, is a clear indicator that carriers aren’t pleased with the changing mobile phone landscape.