Marketing Artist L.L.C.

Corporate Communications Consulting by Andrew Tytla

Results for tag "apple"

iPhone on Verizon

Open up the floodgates: Apple is working on a deal with Verizon Wireless:

  1. Apple has been scouting out EVDO and CDMA Engineers for months in their online iPhone job postings (here, here, here and here).  Yes, some of these skills overlap with UTMS and CDMA can also refer to the broad swath of 3G Technologies…but come on…don’t put “EVDO” on the job description if it ain’t true.. (BTW, WiMax is also littered throughout Apple’s Job postings…interesting/digress)
  2. No matter how big AT&T is and how much range they cover, leaving out Verizon and to a lesser extent Sprint, will be eliminating a broad swath of the US wireless market.  If Apple is serious about competing with Blackberry, Symbian and Android, they will have to broaden their carrier footprint.  One carrier does not a platform make.  Apple will need a way to grow its market after AT&T is saturated.
  3. LTE technology won’t be mature until well into 2010.  Apple can’t afford to wait that long to broaden its carrier footprint
  4. Who is happy with Rogers in Canada (*crickets*)?  EVDO opens up to new carriers there as well.
  5. Verizon wireless is a partnership between Verizon communications and Vodafone.  Vodafone, you’ll recall, has contracts with Apple for iPhones in around 15 markets around the world.  Apple has a working relationship with Vodafone (and Tmobile obviously).
  6. Apple has just started going “Open” in a few markets, including Hong Kong. This will likely increase the number of unlocked 3G iPhones on the world market (South Africa is also open).  While this won’t benefit Verizon directly, it certainly shows that Apple is considering being more “carrier agnostic.”
  7. Tim Cook, famously said that Apple wasn’t married to the one carrier/country model.  As Apple expands, it is going more and more open.
  8. Verizon’s iPhone Cheat sheet was weak and their arguments about Stevo getting old were silly.  They’d rather play ball with Apple than try to defend itself against it.
  9. Apple originally wanted to go with Verizon for the iPhone.  Some of the original disagreements included “not carrying the iPhone at Best Buy and hardware reliability” – see quote below.  AT&T was a second choice.  When Verizon balked, Apple went to AT&T…Think Verizon is happy about that decision (no) or willing to reconsider Apple’s overtures (yes)?

The word from my Verizon Wireless operations engineer is “it ain’t gonna happen” and that the AT&T deal is on for another four years. At least that’s what he’s been told.

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In This Hand, The Palm Pre

Here’s another touch-screen alternative to Apple’s iPhone: the Palm Pre. Introduced at CES 2009 in Las Vegas. Engadget’s got it, as they always do at CES.

Many are hoping this is Palm’s comeback product in the market they once dominated, according to the Wall Street Journal:

The Palm Pre is built upon a new operating system, which is called the Palm webOS, that the company says will make it easier for developers to create applications for Palm devices.

“We think it is the first device that will automatically navigate the Web,” said Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s executive chairman, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Thursday.

The device is Palm’s latest attempt to make headway in the smart-phone market. Palm, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., was once a trendsetter in hand-held computers, and helped pioneer the smart-phone category earlier this decade with the Treo device, but it has since been squeezed by competition from Research in Motion Ltd.’s Blackberry and Apple Inc.’s iPhone. In mid-2007, private equity group Elevation Partners took a 25% stake in Palm and brought on board Mr. Rubinstein, formerly a top Apple executive, to try to bring back innovation at the company.

Amazing how quickly products rise and fall. In spite of Pogue’s panning of the Blackberry Storm, fans remain in favor. Days for its introduction, Verizon was predicting strong sales, although Engadget was reporting software failure.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I need to get an iPhone.

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