Mobile device vendor

Mobile device vendors include Nokia, Sony, Motorola, Samsung, Uniden, Panasonic, and many others. They have quite different support for mobile device code and location-based services.

Typically it is not the device vendors but the network operator and service provider (in Internet, these are different entities, but common carriers in telecom are almost always both, monopolizing services that are on "their" networks, like old fashioned online services prior to the Web).

Device vendor consortia have typically failed to require the carriers to implement key features, such as PCS base station handoff and open switch access. These are supported in standards but cannot be deployed due to carrier monopoly.

In general, the mobile device vendor is an ally, and the telecom common carrier is an opponent, in implementing a healthy buying infrastructure. However, paradoxically, because they profit more from frequent turnover of new devices, the vendor is probably an opponent of healthy signal infrastructure and the longer lifecycle of more modular devices, while the carrier may actually favour it, because it simplifies and standardizes the devices that they must deal with.