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How Jobs Played Hardball In iPhone Birth

Posted by kdawson on from the my-customer-dammit dept.

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Apple bucked the rules of the cellphone industry when creating the iPhone by wresting control away from normally powerful wireless carriers, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Only three executives at the carrier, which is now the wireless unit of AT&T Inc., got to see the iPhone before it was announced. Cingular agreed to leave its brand off the body of the phone. Upsetting some Cingular insiders, it also abandoned its usual insistence that phone makers carry its software for Web surfing, ringtones and other services... Mr. Jobs once referred to telecom operators as "orifices" that other companies, including phone makers, must go through to reach consumers. While meeting with Cingular and other wireless operators he often reminded them of his view, dismissing them as commodities and telling them that they would never understand the Web and entertainment industry the way Apple did, a person familiar with the talks says.'"

9 of 479 comments (clear)

  1. On a general level... by daddyrief · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm really for anything that helps wrestle proprietary control settings away from the major carriers.

    --
    "Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
    1. Re:On a general level... by mp3phish · · Score: 5, Interesting

      While I normally do not like to praise Apple, this is one thing I commend them on. With all the proprietary gimmicks Apple tries to shove down customer's throats, they are not as bad as the gimmicky trash shoved down wireless carrier's throats. For this reason, I have to take Apple's side on this.

      The wireless carriers in the US (and a few other regions) have been gouging the eyes out of customers simply because they have always been considered a premium service, thanks to the federal subsidy known as the universal service fund on landline phones. While the rest of the world commoditized their wireless telephone markets, the US wireless carriers turned them into crap shoot proprietary bullshit.

      The iPhone (though I refuse to admit it is a good deal, or worth anything close to $500) is the first step in finally commoditizing wireless telephone service. Not allowing the carriers to screw up the phone's firmware is what companies like Nokia and Motorola should have done a decade ago. It is no wonder the wireless carriers are doing what they do, look at how easilly the FCC allowed SBC to buy out AT&T Wireless and then buy out AT&T long distance all in a 3 year period, consolidating almost every drop of the original baby bells.

      Thank you Apple for your willingness to play Hardball. I am glad you can see through the corporate crap that is Cingular/AT&T/SBC. My only hope is that you can take the same approach to your own business model and look at yourself from an outsider's perspective, just as you have approached this problem with Cingular.

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      Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
    2. Re:On a general level... by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm sure a locked down phone that only runs Apple's software and is only available on Cingular, with Apple claiming that it's morally wrong to unlock a phone (such people are "bad guys") to run on other networks, is going to do that.

      Anyone who thinks Apple is trying to do anything but shift power from one proprietary group to another is delusional.

      Worse still, Cingular is one of the only two major GSM/UMTS carriers in the US. So it was one of the few that was truly open and non-proprietary, compared to the likes of Verizon.

      I'm hoping some of Apple's innovations in the UI realm will make their way to competing phones, but right now the Apple phone itself is bad news from the point of view of opening up the industry. It represents everything that's bad about the US mobile phone industry, it's expensive, locked down, and treated by its maker as little more than a weapon to play in some insane power wars in which the end user will always be the victim.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    3. Re:On a general level... by MrNiceguy_KS · · Score: 5, Funny
      If fairplay got licensed to the zune. No one would care.

      Not true. Two Zune owners would be thrilled. The other one thinks he's got a brown cell phone with really crappy reception.

      --
      Redundancy is good And also good.
  2. Steve Jobs is WRONG! by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Mr. Jobs once referred to telecom operators as "orifices" that other companies, including phone makers, must go through to reach consumers.

    Incorrect. The consumers are the orifices in the telco / phone maker / customer relationship. Everyone gets to screw them.

    Anyway, let's hope the iPhone enjoys more success than the last Apple/Cingular deal mentioned in the article:

    But the Motorola ROKR, released in the fall of 2005 and carried exclusively by Cingular, was a huge disappointment for Apple executives. .
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    There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
    1. Re:Steve Jobs is WRONG! by pinkstuff · · Score: 5, Funny

      An even better word: Sex.

  3. Still Two-Faced by mythosaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...if Apple meant it, the phones would be 100% unbranded and unlocked, they'd take any GSM provider's card, and APPLE would provide simple, regional, downloadable settings (for carrier-based web proxies, etc.)

    Apple doesn't have to sell them through Cingular (AT&T) or anyone else.

    Bucking the system...my shiny metal ass.

  4. Re:Reality Disortion Field spreading by avalys · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Have you ever heard of something called a 'user interface'? Apple knows how to build a good one, and Motorola, LG, Nokia, and the rest of them do not.

    That is what will sell the iPhone. For every geek who looks at the iPhone and says "Bah! My free-as-in-speech, open-source, ugly orange phone with the stupid name (OpenMoko) will do all that and more! The iPhone is crap!", there will be 100 normal users who try it out and say "Goddamn, this phone is so much easier to use than the POS I have now. I'm buying one."

    I am by no means technically illiterate - I'm a computer science major at MIT. But I have long since lost my patience for fighting with badly-designed, badly-engineered, badly-implemented consumer electronics. I will be buying an iPhone when it comes out, because like all of Apple's recent products, it will 'Just Work'.

    It will be a hybrid iPod/cell phone/PDA with no sacrifices in functionality, compared to carrying around three separate devices. As Jobs mentioned in his keynote, the price is still cheaper than buying a smartphone and iPod Nano separately.

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  5. Rumours by hack++slash · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it true that the iPhone will only have 1 button?

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    To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.