Steve Jobs doesn’t play nice. Back in 2005, when asked about an iPod mobile phone, Jobs said Apple would have to get through many “orifices [i.e. cell phone service providers] to get to the end users.”
Well it seems Jobs has made it through these orifices, because not only did Apple establish a deal with Cingular (now AT&T) for the iPhone service, it managed to get around Cingular’s usual demands to control most of “every detail from processing power to the various features that come with the phone,” said the Wall Street Journal.
With the iPhone, Apple convinced Cingular that it knows Web surfing and multimedia better than they do. Apparently, this was important enough to Cingular that they agreed to give Apple a cut of the revenue generated from subscribers, even though AT&T won’t get a penny from iPhone sales. Is that a price worth paying to be the exclusive carrier of the Apple iPhone?