Tag Archives: Apple Computer

AT&T isn’t losing its monopoly over Apple’s iPhone

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AT&T Logo

AT&T Logo

Looking at the comments of any major tech blog, and many a mainstream newspaper website one would think that as soon as Apple’s exclusivity contract with AT&T runs out (thought to be in 2010 sometime), the California-based computer firm will leave the mobile network behind. I would be wary of over-speculating about AT&T being in a headlock from an Apple tough-guy position. I think the danger to AT&T of losing exclusivity has been exagerated by some commentators.

Take the following example Megan Lavey’s position in a recent TUAW post:

AT&T has long been the subject of grumbling from the community of US iPhone users who want to use their phones legitimately. Ever since the original release back in 2007, it feels like AT&T has been trying to play catch-up when it comes to service and tower availability. But, the release of the iPhone 3G S might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

The ramifications for AT&T will come when it sits down at the negotiation table with Apple to extend its current gig as exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the United States. Apple won’t forget that AT&T didn’t have key features in place when they needed to be there. If Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, or any other carrier can convince Apple that they would be ahead of the game while AT&T lags (and, believe me, it wouldn’t be that hard of an argument to make), Apple will take its toys and go elsewhere.

I don’t think this is going to happen, and here’s why. Just by chance I watched Steve Jobs’s interview with Walt Mossberg at 2007′s All Things D (D5) Conference, and I was struck by the sense of loyalty that Jobs expressed when referring to how Cingular took a risk on Apple in accepting the iPhone to their network while Verizon (we hear) wouldn’t give them access. The quote arrives just before the two minute mark:

“I think Cingular invested in us, they took a gamble on us, and likewise we took a gamble on them. So, I will never forget that.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the Wall Street Journal and Walt Mossberg’s ‘D’ Conference in 2007

AT&T, at the time called Cingular, may not be the strongest network, but as CEO Randall Stephenson mentioned in this year’s D Conference, the top complaint for all mobile phone networks in the US is signal; it’s not unique to Cingular. There’s no saying there will be any less of a mob decrying Verizon signal strengths were Apple to release an iPhone CDMA version. I imagine Apple could likely keep a level of pragmatism and institutional memory in its decision making process – it wants the best business result but it also wants a carrier in the US that it can actually deal with, and back in 2007 (let alone 2004 when they started working on the iPhone), Verizon was so locked up in their own software packages, network restrictions and carrier lock-ins, I can’t imagine how a pairing of such companies would have worked.  The cultures are, ironically, too similar; both Apple and Verizon want to have full control over their ‘product’ and thus a melding of minds just wouldn’t have worked at the time.

This is not to say that there is no possibility of Apple adopting Verizon as a partner, but I think the importance of institutional memory and personal relationships is incredibly within Apple, evidenced by the number of times that key employees have been hired and rehired again after any attempts to jump ship, taking people like Jon Rubinstein and Craig Federighi as obvious examples.  Who knows whether Verizon will care about Apple’s products once they’ve got them. For the moment the iPhone is AT&T’s golden egg and thus they work to retain it. Once it’s gone how will that relationship with Apple play out? Will AT&T remain accommodating? Verizon might be added as a carrier, but it won’t be without considerable fight and, I’m guessing, significant anguish.

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Response to Surface: They Fuck It Up

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The ‘best’ reaction to the Surface computer I posted about yesterday comes from ‘The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs’ which comes out with the winning headline: Microsoft: Now We Will Fuck Up Your Coffee Table

These friggin guys just don’t quit, do they? They’ve ruined computing. …Now they’re going after household furniture too with this “Surface” computer. Just think. Soon you can sit down and start cursing at your coffee table when it freezes up or needs to reboot or warns you about some security alert. Jesus.

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‘Surface’ threat to from Microsoft: Table Computing

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A new display technology to be released by Microsoft today called Surface could be a dangerous threat to Apple Computer (as well as others like Philips, Sony and Nokia). It’s essentially a multi-touch screen embedded into table that allows the user(s) to interact with it through using their hands as well as objects placed on the table itself. You could use your fingers to grab the edges of a photo to make it bigger or just drag it ‘into’ a mobile phone that’s laying on the ‘Surface’ and in connnection with the device. This dragging move would simply drop the image into the mobile phone’s storage. It could be used (according to Microsoft) to plan directions to or from a location (such as if it were placed in a coffee shop/airline departure or arrivals lound/museum).


What’s interesting about the technology is that the brains behind it are not all that revolutionary. Many of the techniques shown have been displayed in other forum like Jeff Han’s multi-touch talks at the 2006 and 2007 TED conferences, the music browsing application’s technique of flipping the album cover art to show a track listing (showed at Steve Jobs’ January 2007 Macworld (iPhone) Keynote). Embedded dots on the bottom of an article would read the pre-programmed intentions of an object (like a higly reduced Datamatrix machine readable barcode). The underlying technology isn’t new but screwing it all together in a pleasing way is. This is the realm of Apple’s strengths and Microsoft, in a number of areas of late, has been showing its design acumen is not as faulty as sometimes thought.

This device could be a success for Microsoft, and ironically if Apple were to have made it I don’t think it would be. Why? Because the technology relies on interaction with other companies and partnering with groups to place the device, something that Apple is very weak on. A great example is the iPhone currently on the route to release. It may be a fantastic product but months after its announcement, developers still don’t know if it will be open to outside applications or whether it will be locked down to only Apple-approved initiatives. Of course Microsoft isn’t always successful in this field: see technologies like its Spot watches and other devices that are based on FM radio transmissions of data over the air. The project is still running but never gained anything like the momentum Microsoft must have hoped it would attain.

What’s most dangerous about this development is that it makes Microsoft look cool and hip. If you can simply place your iPod Zune onto your Surface at home and it starts piping music through your home theatre system without the hassle of having to network it up with your PC then that makes Microsoft look good. Even better if you can do that with your Zune at a friend’s house. Or a friend’s player at your house. It’s the social interaction that is key and makes devices like this work. Getting maps at a coffee shop has limited appeal after a while. There’s no reason why you’d rather do it there than your PC at home, but sharing photos or videos of a recent vacation is much more fun at a local third-space than in your office cubicle.

The technology is amazing because it’s not the technology that’s interesting. It’s the content partners and the network of locations that counts. This isn’t perhaps the type of thing that’s going to be in an average home for some time yet but it’s the perfect thing to have in a B2C environment like a coffee shop/dentist waiting room or even a corporate foyer. These play directly into Microsoft’s strengths, and Apple’s weaknesses.

The WSJ’s D-Conference joint interview today between Jobs and Gates should be interesting.

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iTunes’s UK competitors pay artists 1/2 penny per track

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“For everything sold on iTunes, we get the majority of the 70-79p per unit sale price,” [one independent label owner] said, then added: “But for everything sold on the Ruckus Network we receive the princely sum of £0.005 per unit. That’s half a pence. My distributor then takes their 25 per cent off of that, leaving myself and the artists to dish up the remaining fractions of a penny between us.”

It’s not much better through Real Networks, he informed – for sales through that service, his label receives a penny per track, he claimed. The thousand tracks sold so far have accrued £10 to the label (to share with the artists) rather than, “the £790 or so we’d have got for the same amount of sales through iTunes.”
MacWorld: iTunes income substantial for music partners

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