Pop quiz. You run one of the few CDMA-based mobile providers in the world, and while you were rumored to have passed on the original iPhone, thus locking you out of the North American market for Apple’s revolutionary handset, even your Old World parent, Vodafone, has finally, desperately signed up to carry the iPhone 3G in many other markets. Bottom-line, you missed the boat to the point of now being landlocked, and what do you have to say for yourself? You’ll do better? You’ll try harder? You’ll stop with the iClones and actually try to out-innovate the iPhone?
Not if you’re Ivan “the Terrible” Seidenberg, who’s big answer to the iPhone 3G is:
“Steve Jobs eventually will get old . . . I like our chances.”
Yup. Steve Jobs, who helped bring the Apple II (command line), Mac (graphical interface), and iPhone (multi-touch) to the masses, in spite of health concerns that might make lesser CEOs (subjected company not only included but vehemently singled out) lose continence in themselves, will — gasp — grow old.
If that’s best Seidenberg can come up with, his board has a far bigger reason to panic than competition from Apple.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Seidenberg has opened his mouth about Apple only to firmly insert feet.
And luckily (for our funny bones), it’s not likely to be the last!
Information Week has posted an article discussing how the spectrum action is going. You remember, the wireless 700MHz spectrum action that is freed up from analog TV? Anyway, Verizon has won the largest segment of the bandwidth spending $9.6 billion to do so. Guess who’s number 2? You guessed it kids, AT&T. AT&T spent $6.6 billion for their share. What does this mean? Well for starters the FCC says that the bandwidth being auctioned off must be kept open and usable on any network; no more of this lock-down on a carrier mumbo-jumbo. Then there is Google coming with Android later this year…
So what impact does this have on the iPhone? Will Apple sell an iPhone on a segment of the open bandwidth? Could the 3G iPhone run only on AT&T’s 3G network and the EDGE iPhones run on the “open” spectrum?
Really, nothing puts out fire like fiddlin’. Verizon’s CEO has a bang-up plan to deal with the iPhone and its market success:
“The way we come at this is to let the iPhone hit the market…. I don’t think it changes the game plan for how we approach the market. But we need to see the impact. The burden is on [AT&T and Apple] to prove the market will change.”
You could go and read the interview source at C|Net but it’s all business marketing speak and whatnot, so I’ve translated their plan to make it easier to understand:
- put fingers in ears
- close eyes
- breathe in deeply
- shout LA LA LA LA LA LA LA
- say “I CAN’T HEAR YOU”
- go back to step 3, as necessary
In other news, they have nothing to worry about with the Qualcomm chip embargo either. Everything is perfectly normal, move along quietly. Plz continue to buy ringtones at 3 bucks each and I really hope mobile TV is where it’s at, kthxbye.
