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AT&T Playing Hardball With Apple?
Ponca City, We Love You writes "There's some interesting speculation from Cringley on why AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson let drop that a new version of Apple's iPhone will be introduced in 2008. The announcement is sure to cut into Apple's Christmas sales and could also cost ATT a million new customers and at least $1 billion in market cap, says Cringley. 'It is no coincidence that Stephenson made his remarks in Silicon Valley, rather than in San Antonio or New York,' says Cringley. 'He came to the turf of his 'partner' and delivered a message that will hurt Apple as much as AT&T, a message that says AT&T doesn't really need Apple despite the iPhone's success.' What may be troubling the relationship between AT&T and Apple is the upcoming auction for 700-MHz wireless spectrum and AT&T's discovery that Apple may be joining Google in bidding."
Steve Jobs has a history of choosing abusive partners, even though he knows very clearly they are abusive. First, sugar water salesman John Sculley, and now SBC, which bought the AT&T name apparently because the name SBC had such a terrible but deserved reputation.
(Anyone interested in how SBC became AT&T can watch Stephen Colbert explain in a 1 minute 14 second video: The New AT&T.)
Steve Jobs certainly knew SBC/AT&T is abusive; it was a telephone company then centered in his home state of California. He clearly knew John Sculley was abusive, he called John Sculley a sugar-water salesman before he was hired.
Remember, John Sculley arranged that Steve Jobs be fired from Apple. Then, over a period of years, John Sculley almost destroyed Apple. Eventually, Sculley was fired, Steve Jobs was hired again, and Apple became strong again.
The evidence is that Steve Jobs is an extremely intelligent person with a huge anger problem. He has a reputation for being abusive himself. Having abusive partners seems to be another expression of anger, an attempt to hide his anger from himself.
Oh please, everyone but suburban American trash knows that your telecommunications market is a pile of shit. Just look at the Verizon and it's use of the BREW platform. How fucked up is that? Verizon actually disables in-built features of various phones and makes you buy their turds (BREW application) to use the same damn features. And doesn't T-mobile make you pay for IM by each message? And the fact that in the USA paying for incoming text messages is the norm, isn't that pretty dumb?
And don't get me started on the immense lock-in that American telecos force on their users. Did you know that in some EU countries it's illegal to sell only locked phones? Americans can't even dream about such rules! All the telecos have to do is mumble some incoherent crap about "fighting government regulation" and you can bet your ass that over 80% will think the telecos are right, even if they don't know shit about the mobile telecommunications industry.
Don't get me wrong, Europe has it's own problems (e.g. roaming within Europe can be fucking expensive, unsubsidized phones can cost a lot), but the American telecommunications industry is a bigger pile of shit. And compared to Japan and South Korea, USA's telecommunication industry is like a 3rd world country.
Don't talk about things you have no knowledge about.