It’s been about a month since Apple unveiled the iPhone to an audience who generally responded with ooo’s and aaah’s. I’m sure everybody knows by now about Apple’s exclusive deal with Cingular to be the sole provider in the United States for iPhone service. They have five years to the iPhone, all to themselves. But, was Cingular the back-up plan? According to USA Today, Verizon was actually offered the deal first. This happened over two years ago! Verizon declined the opportunity saying that they had nothing bad to say about Apple and the iPhone, just that they couldn’t come to a deal that was beneficial on both ends.
Here are a few reasons why Verizon may have said ‘no thanks’
- Apple wanted sole control over customer service issues with the iPhone
- Apple also wanted a portion of monthly fees
- iPhones would have been limited to sell only in Verizon and Apple stores- no distribution partners like Wal-Mart of Best Buy would be able to sell them.
So far there has been no word on all of the details on the Cingular deal, other than the 5 year exclusivity. Both Apple and Cingular have talked up the great relationship that they have with each other, so they must have agreed somewhere along the line. Additionally, they haven’t disclosed the financial terms of the agreement with Apple. I’d be really curious to know how much they paid to have exclusive rights to the iPhone for 5 years! That takes us all the way until 2012 when there will probably be plenty of other “copy-cat” iPhone-ish options available.
Source: USA Today
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Tags: General, Apple, Downloads, iPhone, Microsoft, Screenshots, Verizon
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http://tallyuk.wordpress.com/2.....tent-1985/
Post with images about the original apple phone patent but way back to 1985
Man, that’s pretty hilarious. I wonder if there is a prototype of that bad boy sitting in a vault somewhere. Or maybe it is on Jobs’s desk.
Man, at&t really got bent over huh?
But that means Apple first thought of the CDMA market first, which is surprising since GSM seems to be more popular in Europe. I guess they wanted to capture the asian markets instead of euro markets.
I still can’t see how Apple wants a share of the monthly fees. No wonder at&t will require a data plan
They want to keep their track record of having the absolute worst phones ever.
I’ve never actually tried Verizon myself but I’ve heard some bad things about them. Actually, I hear bad things about every company all the time so how is anyone ever supposed to choose a good company? If a truly amazing cell phone company ever emerges then the others will go out of business, well, that is if they ever stop merging.
Uh. You misused “its”. When it’s used as a possessive pronoun, there is no apostrophe. When it’s used as a contraction, there’s an apostrophe between “t” and “s”. It’s not that hard to figure out its proper usage.
its will be ok… i understood the its… its is a tough word to use correctly… ittttssss better if you get over its
Verizon seems to enjoy to software cripple their phones, it may be that Apple wouldnt get into a 5 year agreement to only sell a crippled iPhone.