AT&T Plans Its Own iPhone Jailbreak by Selling Android, Palm Smartphones

I've argued that Apple (AAPL) has to drop the iPhone exclusive it has with AT&T (T) because it can't afford to be tied in. The latest evidence that this is happening comes from the carrier itself, with its sudden interest in all things smartphone.

AT&T plans to introduce seven new smartphones in the first half of 2010 -- five using the Android OS from Google (GOOG) and two from Palm (PALM). It's a big change, especially the Android phones from Motorola (MOT), Dell (DELL), and HTC, as it will be the first time the carrier sells phones using Google's OS.

I suspect this is actually a reaction to Apple having said that it's no longer interested in an exclusive relationship and plans to play the field, also known as selling through Verizon (VZ), particularly as that powerhouse has been making AT&T look downright silly in one of the smarter attack ad campaigns I can remember in high tech. If a lock on the iPhone was still available, I doubt that AT&T would have risked an Android blitz, especially as Apple and Google seem to have swung the relationship pendulum from bosom buddies to calculated one-upsmanship.

The real winner is likely to be Palm, which has been stuck with Sprint Nextel (S) and hasn't had access to the big subscriber numbers of either AT&T or Verizon, and there are rumors that Palm will announce a Verizon deal sometime this week.

What will be particularly interesting is seeing how people choose among iPhone, Android, and Palm now that the three will actually be available as options within a carrier. When the iPhone is available more broadly, does it lose some of its mystique? Only consumer behavior will know for sure. The other big question is given all the trouble that AT&T has had with data volumes because of iPhone app downloads (whether actually 3 billion or not), what will it do if it manages to get even more people pushing bytes? Ironically, the change may be a blessing in disguise, as neither Palm nor Android has the iPhone's sheer mass of numbers, so there could be a little less downloading, and a little less pressure.

Image via stock.xchng user Jascha400d, site standard license.