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."

Comments

Re:Pscht!

[bshellenberg]

I'm quite certain that Apple needs AT&T far more than the other way around. Without the iPhone, AT&T still sells phones and does business. Without AT&T, Apple has no carrier.

Put a stop to this one early...

[shmlco]

I think some industry types are overestimating just how much the public follows the off-hand comments of a CEO at a luncheon.

Besides, the fact that a 3G phone is coming isn't even a secret. If you wanted an iPhone for Christmas, you wanted one, and despite knowing full well that another one was coming next year. Heck, I bought one in June, knowing full well that Apple could easily introduce a newer version in November. I'd even figured out who'd get the old one if it happened.

Net effect on Apple? Zip.

And Cringely was right about one thing. Google announced that they were bidding today. But the press release also made another thing quite clear: their application does not include any partners.

So. No partners means no Apple partnership, which means that there was nothing for AT&T's CEO to find out. Which in turn means that his comments were relatively innocent, and not "a $1 billion message to Apple CEO Steve Jobs." By my watch, it took less than ten hours for Cringely's consipracy theory to be shot down. Could be a new record.

Of course, you could spin it that Jobs, quaking in his boots at all of the iPhone sales he's already lost, called up Schmidt, pulled out of a planned multi-billion dollar deal, and Google obligingly issued the press release to cover his tracks. Yeah, right.

That's exactly how SJ would handle it.

Re:I doubt it will affect apple's sales.

[Anonymous Coward]

3G is more important for countries outside of the US where 3G is generally a lot faster and more widely available.

The iPhone maybe perfect for the US, the market it was obviously designed for, but outside of the US it doesn't look anywhere near as shiny.

Re:Funny you should mention IBM...

[Alan Partridge]

"I would wager that IBM didn't blow off Apple, but that IBM really couldn't deliver a performance competitive in a form with a TDP appropriate for laptops, with the final straw being Intel releasing Core2, for all intents and purposes erasing the instructions per clock advantage the PPC architecture had. (I know Apple made the jump before that, but I guarantee you that Intel shared the Core2 info with Apple)."

Jobs stated as much when he announced the Intel switch. It was all about performance per watt and the roadmap - why IBM doesn't want to compete on PPW is a mystery - it's just as applicable to the datacentre as it is to the notebook.

Re:Cringley

[hey!]

Why would they drop a million customers?

Basically, they've got a contract with Apple; unless letting the cat out of the bag this way invalidates that contract, they continue to have their exclusive for the duration of that contract.

AT&T's interest in this deal is to rope in more subscribers. The people who wait a few months for the new iPhone are going to be signing up with AT&T. Granted they leave a few months of subscription fees on the table, but if they suspect Apple is going to knife them in the back, they'll make it up on the back end.

Who could Apple knife AT&T in the back? Possibly by creating a platform for wireless applications that was not a phone under the terms of their contract. A wireless platform plus a third party VoIP app would be as good as phone for many people.

Re:Funny you should mention IBM...

[Heembo]

I would wager that IBM didn't blow off Apple.... IBM found out early in its PowerPC market lifecycle that Apple was a PITA to deal with and was only a tiny fraction of the market for PowerPC. The real money for IBM was with embedded devices. Opps, thanks for your time helping us design this architecture, Apple. IBM is still selling pleeeeeety of processors and Apple shifting to Intel "ain't nuttin' but a thing." The real news here is that Steve Jobs is now in his office doin' a little Balmer-like screaming and chair-throwing now that they understand just how awful it is to do business with wireless carries. I hope to hell Google (and only Google) wins some of that spectrum (and leases a good chunk to Apple). F-U WIRELESS CARRIERS.

EVERYONE READ THE ABOVE COMMENT

[porcupine8]

This one quote makes the entire thing a non-story, and it's obvious that many of the commenters below haven't read it. And yes, it's a real quote - google any section of it and you'll pull up a dozen stories on it from mid-September. The AT&T CEO can't leak something that Jobs already said in public, which means we can stop theorizing about the motivations behind or repercussions of such a leak.

Apple + Google Market Cap = 376.3 Bills...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, here's the play: Apple and Google merge, then buy out AT&T...or Verizon, or whichever wireless provider you care to name...

Wikipedia answers all

[Foerstner]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun

...In British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team is in the dressing room" (formal agreement) refers to the team as an ensemble, whilst "the team are fighting among themselves" (notional agreement) refers to the team as individuals.

In American English, collective nouns usually take singular verb forms (formal agreement). In cases where a metonymic shift would be otherwise revealed nearby, the whole sentence may be recast to avoid the metonymy. (For example, "the team are fighting among themselves" may become "the team members are fighting among themselves" or "the team is fighting [period]".) See American and British English differences - Formal and notional agreement.