“Like a lot of other pundits, I keep facing the fact that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on the Apple board and expecting that association to manifest itself eventually in some form of product or service alliance, but that has yet to happen,” Robert X. Cringely writes for PBS. “Could this finally be the time?”
Cringely seriously doubts that Apple will be involved in 700-MHz auction action. “Apple’s current rumblings about the 700-MHz band are more likely Jobs helping Schmidt. If the mobile carriers interested in the 700-MHz band think that it might cost them $16 billion rather than $6 billion to win the auction, they might not bid at all, allowing Google to get the property for less than it might have had to pay in a contested auction. At some price the deal becomes uneconomic for the mobile carriers and, given their small minds and squinty eyes, they’ll see it as uneconomic for Google, too. ‘Let Google take the fall,’ they’ll think,” Cringely writes.
Cringely writes, “But Google won’t be falling.”
“The huge expense of buying the 700-MHz band and building out the infrastructure could be made a lot less huge if Google didn’t have to build out the infrastructure. No traditional mobile company could get away with this, but I think Google could,” Cringely writes.
Cringely explains how in his full article and also writes that Apple’s iPod classic has issues that will soon create some PR problems (supposedly, Apple will have its corporate hands full with this which is another reason why Apple won’t be involved in 700-MHz auction. A typically wild Cringley-esque overstatement, but back to the matter at hand).
Cringely writes, “Google would overnight become the largest U.S. ISP with direct and very high-performance access to its customers, including those using the new Google Phone or any other phone that supports WiFi connections, like the iPhone and many others. Google becomes the biggest and lowest-cost ISP and potentially the biggest and lowest-cost mobile phone company in the bargain.”
Full article here.
Um, what if the rumored Google Phone (gPhone) is really the Apple iPhone?
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