AT&T Baby Steps Back To Smart Phone Supremacy?

I know I have been quiet lately. Job, family, and admin responsibilities take a toll on my free time. But while I was out and about yesterday with the family I stopped by my small town’s only AT&T Corporate Store to check out the first “real” Android phone AT&T decided carry, the Samsung Captivate. I knew before I opened the front door what I was going to be greeted by and I wasn’t disappointed. There was a ton of iPhone banners and sales aides everywhere. On the right hand side of the store was two section display devoted to the iPhone. One section was the iPhone 4, and the other was the 3GS. Videos were playing, you know the rest of the story.

I was promptly acknowledged by an AT&T Sales Associate and they asked if they could help me and I told them I wanted to see the Captivate. She pointed to the left side of the store and I headed off to check it out. I am not going to get to deep into the Samsung Captivate ’s specs but to suffice it to say, it is a pretty nice device! Super AMOLED 4 Inch Screen, 1 GHz Processor, only a 5 megapixel camera, and Android 2.1. I walked up to the Captivate and my  first impression was that it is was very small (outside diameter) to have a 4 inch screen. It looked pretty good but had no selling aides like the iPhone 4 had on the other side of the store. As I picked up the Captivate I noticed to the right of it was an iPhone 3GS! WTF?? I thought they had those on the other side! Well, it looks like they are also burying the iPhone 3GS version throughout the store as well. I continued to look down the wall and noticed the HTC Aria (yawn) and a little further down was the AT&T Tilt 2 (dust on it). What a bummer.

So is AT&T finished with their break from Smart Phone Supremacy? I realize they have the iPhone but I think Verizon is cleaning their clocks with new device releases. Granted they are all Android with the Incredible and Droid X, but they still have a decent assortment of devices listed on their website such as the HTC Ozone™, Samsung Saga™ in Gray, Samsung Omnia® II, HTC Imagio™, and the LG Fathom™. Gone from Verizon is their version of the Touch Pro 2.

So what does AT&T need to do to get back in the game? Earlier today David wrote that: AT&T To Receive 8 Million Window Phone 7 Devices and there is rumors that the Dell Streak could be coming as well. Is this enough? We know that AT&T looses it’s exclusive on the iPhone starting the first of next year, so maybe that will be the wake up call to get AT&T to invest in a broader range of high end devices. Let us know what you think!