Android News
Android Person of the Year Nominee: Ralph de la Vega
December 24, 2010 | by Andrew Kameka
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Ralph De La Vega
CEO, AT&T Mobility
Reason nominated: Leads the last American frontier for Android to conquer
Android started with T-Mobile, exploded with Verizon, and led a turnaround at Sprint. Being embraced by 3 of 4 major U.S. carriers, one would think that Android has arrived. But that fourth nut has proven to be tough to crack.
AT&T still hasn’t gone full throttle with Android, instead embracing a series of underwhelming phones and decisions that only seems to make people believe it purposely disrespects the green bot to protect the iPhone. What will it take for Big Blue to offer more quality Android phones and better options for consumers?
It will take intervention from Ralph De La Vega, a man who has shown that he’s no friend to Android. De La Vega displayed only mild interest in Android since its inception, and was often dismissive of the OS until AT&T offered the Backflip earlier this year. Though the carrier has since gone on to release a handful Android phones, most have been outdated, disappointing phones not worth purchasing.
De La Vega was not a friend to Android, but Person of the Year doesn’t have to be a positive influence. It can also be someone who leads the second largest carrier in the United States that is dead last when it comes to choices for a quality Android phone. It can be someone who blocks non-Market apps and charges more for less as his company impacts Android in a negative way.
AT&T is the last major U.S. carrier that seems to be holding out on Android. While AT&T continues to stockpile checks for iPhone sales, snags exclusives for BlackBerry, and boldly attempts to become the premiere carrier for Windows Phone 7 devices, Android sits in the corner with the Captivate left to fend for itself as the only Android phone on AT&T worthy of comparison to these other devices.
As the leader of a wireless network serving more than 90 million people, Ralph De La Vega has been in a position to be much more aggressive on the phones that AT&T offers. He chose to instead watch a parade of top-notch Android phones head towards other carriers and did very little in the promotion of its sole elite device. AT&T encourages customers to “Rethink Possible” in commercials; perhaps its time for the company take some of its own device and do better in 2011.
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This article is part of a series of profiles on the people who most-impacted Android in 2010. Read more about the Android Person of the Year series here.
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Interesting piece, but I still don't get how he should be considered for Android Person of the Year?!?!?
My recent post Keeping Up With Mobile Times…
if anything he should be the android enemy of the year, then again this is what this article is saying.
unfortunately I agree
Once we get a positive confirmation that Verizon is getting iOS I believe they'll start to slow and water down their Android options too. This will allow the #3 and #4 carriers in the US to step up their Android game.
in response, & in as the author stated…."android blew open with Verizon"! There's a reason for that. All the next cool androids (ces 2011). happen to be Verizon. Whose slowing down the first google endorsed tablet as well?……It's going be also on Verizon. Thats not watering down at the least.
I definitely think Ralph s/b Android Person of the year. If his network didn't suck so bad, I'd likely still be rocking an iPhone. Under Ralph's leadership, his network had turned into a running joke (#ATTFail anyone?) and pushed me into the arms of Android. I've been happy ever since.
Android torn in the *ss award of the year…
The guy is a complete moron, and if AT&T weren't so self delusional about their "success" with the iPhone, he would have been fired as the failure he is long ago.
To the article author: "Big Blue" has been the nickname of IBM since well before you were born and continues to be so… Ralph leads mobility from the consumer side. Android based devices are superior to Apple, especially with regard to business use… (see Streak). By the way Android, fix the 2.2 bug for accessing .wma files.