On May 3, 2008, at 11:50 AM, dave malouf wrote:
How do you know that Verizon didn't turn down Apple first?
Verizon *did* turn Apple down. It was Apple's first choice, but they laughed Jobs out of the boardroom.
When the iPhone was released, Verizon issued a press release saying that Apple had approached them first and they were proud of not saying yes because they felt it was a bad deal for both Verizon customers and shareholders. Their rationale was that the level of service demanded by Apple was unreasonable. (My understanding was the primary sticking point was that Apple would activate and service the phones from their own retail outlet, but I believe Apple was demanding too much money for each contract.)
Apple had hoped to get the telcos in a bidding war. They approached several simultaneously. Cingular was the only one that gave them any attention. It took 18 months to negotiate the deal with Cingular, partly because AT&T acquired them in the middle and negotiations had to start over.
[This came from several business articles documenting the iPhone's development, including one that appeared in Wired a few months back. I'm currently at 30,000 feet and not online, so I don't have citations (sorry, Andrei), but you can find the articles amongst my delicious links -- http://del.icio.us/jmspool -- probably tagged with something clever like Apple or iPhone. I used them as readings for my Experience Design Management class for Tufts.]
Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
