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Allow me to refresh your memory of what Glenn Lurie, Cingular's president of national distribution told journalist at CES this year, I think they bent a lot.The way I see it, Cingular is the one being bent over by Apple, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal.
We already knew that the iPhone wasn't reveal to Mr. Sigman, until a few weeks prior to its world premier. That's just not right, in my opinion. At least not a common practice, since it's customary for the service providers to hold tight control of how the handsets are developed and marketed. This control includes every detail from processing power to the various features that come with the phone. This also includes not using Cingular Music. Big ouch.
1 point for Apple, 0 point for Cingular.
Cingular also agreed to leave its brand off the body of the phone.
2 points for Apple, 0 point for Cingular.
Then there's the part of the deal where Cingular share with Apple a portion of the monthly revenue from subscribers.
3 points for Apple, still 0 point for Cingular.
In return, Apple gives Cingular a multi-year exclusive over the iPhone. Finally, Cingular scores one point, at the price of isolating many consumers on other carriers.
So in summary, it's my opinion that Cingular, now AT&T gave up more to be the exclusive distributor of the iPhone, than Apple ever did.
Enjoy the video of Stan Sigman taken by me at Macworld 2007, introducing the partnership between Cingular and Apple.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
First of all, a business partnership means that everyone gives in a little to reach an agreement - it’s NOT like a lawsuit where you chalk up your losses and lick your wounds and try to convince yourself it’s not so bad … you only left off about 100 other issues that you could argue with both ways - while the phone is not going to say Cingular - how many people actually think their Moto phone is made by Verizon or T-Mobile - besides, the Cingular name is going to come up on the screen not to mention that thanks to partnring with Apple, Cingular also got about $1 billion dollars worth of free PR though AT&T tossed that away to change back to AT&T - besides Apple, what is the ONLY brand that will get associated with the iphone - AT&T/Cingular … and 3 months before it’s out, it’s already attained a must-have status and there are only TWO places to buy it - at Apple and at AT&T … what is that worth to have a lock on driving 500,000-1,000,000 walking into your stores or million checking online or hundreds of millions reading about you & Apple? How much would AT&T have had to spend on PR or ads to get all the blogshere pages so far? What worth is it to make your competitors look old and out of it? I’m not claming the iphone is perfect nor even great as I haveb’t actually touched one but it is already clearly a disruptive force psychologically and with real results (how many people are holding off switching or buying a new cell phone?) so your three criterias only begin to touch upon the implications … just like when Aple choose Cingular, it choose no to the others AND it choose no to go it along as a MVDO … so, your scoring system is just too basic and hardly covering anything.
You left off a few we already know about: Apple also did got Cingular to implement its desired voicemail app, and Apple got Cingular give up its own walled garden services.
But we don’t know about a lot of other issues that may have gone Cingular’s way, such as VoIP calls, WiFi use without a cell agreement, access to iTunes Store with portion of sales revenue going to Cingular, and using iTunes songs as ringtones (this one may be more of a music licensing issue).
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