“With the much-awaited iPhone set to launch Friday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spoke with me about the hotly-desired phone,” Jefferson Graham reports for USA Today.
A few tidbits:
Q: IPhone Day is finally here. How do you feel?
Steve Jobs: We’re about as ready as we’re going to be. We’ve been working for this for many many months now. The phones are ready and the stores are ready.
Q: How long will it take to get phones if you are sold out?
Jobs: We’ve made a lot of them. It may not be enough — but we will work as hard as we can to get more into the stores.
Q: What about corporate e-mail? I understand that’s an issue for many consumers, who may not be able to hook up to their company networks?
Jobs: You’ll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks. We have some pilots going with companies with names you’ll recognize. This won’t be a big issue.
Full interview here.
The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Wingfield and Amol Sharma also talked with Jobs and Stephenson today:
A few snippets:
WSJ: What do you both envision being added over time to the iPhone, in terms of access to ringtones through Cingular’s (now rebranded AT&T) platform and maybe through some other manner, like turning your iTunes songs into ringtones?
Mr. Jobs: As you may know, iTunes is now the number three distributor of music in the U.S., ahead of Amazon and Target and behind Best Buy and Wal-Mart, and obviously the largest online distributor of music in the world. Of course, you can play that music now on your iPhone. One might imagine a lot of things down the road.
WSJ: Is one of those things offering music purchases and video purchases directly from the phone?
Mr. Jobs: There’s a lot of things you can imagine down the road.
WSJ: Can you discuss any applications you’d like to see third-party developers create for the iPhone, specifically things like Skype and other voice over Internet protocol software?
Mr. Jobs: We obviously thought about VOIP. You still need a cellular phone because you’re not always going to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot. One you have a cellular phone plan, it costs you zero incremental dollars to use it when you’re making the next phone call. VOIP, while an interesting technology, didn’t seem to be a big breakthrough to us. But others might feel differently, and others may make Web-based VOIP clients available for the iPhone – I think someone’s already working on that.
Full interview here.
John Markoff reports for The New York Times, “On the eve of the Apple iPhone’s debut, the top executives of Apple and AT&T today defended their decision to rely upon AT&T’s slow Edge wireless data network, rather than a faster network that is less widely available… ‘It doesn’t concern me,’ Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive officer, said today in a joint telephone interview along with Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive. The fact that the iPhone offers faster Wi-Fi networking would more than make up for the relatively slow pace of its cellular data network, he suggested.”
Markoff reports, “”Mr. Jobs also said that Apple’s hardware design team had decided against using the more advanced 3G chipsets because were relatively power-hungry. As result, Apple improved the battery life of the iPhone. ‘We felt it wasn’t the right trade-off now,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that will all change in the future.'”
Markoff reports, “AT&T has invested $16 billion into its network over the past two years, and it is now designed to handle the expected increase in wireless data users, Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive officer, said. ‘Capacity won’t be an issue. The network is ready.'”
“Mr. Jobs seized on the multi-touch technology after Apple product designers proposed it as a ‘Safari Pad,’ a portable Web-surfing appliance. Instead, he saw the technology as something that could be used for a similar purpose in a cellphone, said a former Apple employee,” Markoff reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Shogun” for the heads up.]
He’s basically promising Exchange and Lotus:
Check Mate!!!!
Just left Target, which has an AT&T store next to it, with a security guard sitting inside and a sign in the window that says “iPhones are not kept here overnight”. Hah!
<u>From the article:</u>
Jobs: We started with the iPhone three years ago.
MDN word: really???
Hmmmm. I wonder if IBM’s announcement mnonths ago to bring Lotus to Mac again is related to this. Wow. If so, the chess pieces have been moved very well.
I’m sure the phone is ready, but I’m not so sure about the network. AT&T didn’t have the capacity in San Francisco last Sunday afternoon near City Hall. Even though I had excellent wireless coverage, every call I tried to make, including to check my own VoiceMail, failed for hours…
From USA Today:
Q: Except for operating system upgrades and Apple TV, the company historically announces a product and then has it for sale immediately. The build-up and hype for the iPhone has been unprecedented — will this change the way you market products?
Jobs: I don’t think we will. We did this, because you have to get certified by the FCC, and things become public.
When they’re ready to come out with iPhone v.2 or an iPhone Nano or any other version or revision of iPhone will they still have to FCC it so that they’ll have to announce 6 months early?
Is it a different answer when you’re talking about a revision verses a new model?
No, Lotus Notes for the Mac has always been around in one form or another. It didn’t have all the features of the PC version, but was quite capable. I used it 7 years ago on our corporate network and got updates from the Lotus discs (they ship the Mac and PC versions on the same disc)
>”Mr. Jobs seized on the multi-touch technology after Apple product designers proposed it as a ‘Safari Pad.”
That is the first time I’ve read that tidbit. That’s why he earns the big bucks, let’s face it, who in the friggin’ world needs a ‘Safari Pad’. He saw through the Designer’s dreck and pull out the golden egg.
You had me at the red zune
From CNNMoney.com:
“The iPhone impact
Because Palm relies on consumers and small businesses for a greater percentage of its business, the company is expected to be more vulnerable to competition from Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.
This may be a factor in the company’s disappointing forecast for the current quarter. Palm expects revenue to come in between $355 million and $365 million. Earnings excluding stock-options charges are expected to come in between 7 cents a share and 9 cents a share.
This is well below analysts’ expectations for earnings of 14 cents a share on revenue of $392.8 million for the period.
Executives from Palm admitted as much during a conference call with investors Thursday. (Ed) Colligan said the company was taking “competitive product launches” into consideration for its guidance for the quarter.
‘I don’t know if it can possibly live up to the hype,” he said. “But we’re taking into account that there will certainly be some stall for at least a couple weeks while people check them [the iPhone] out. And they will have 30 days to return it, so we hope we’ll benefit from that, if that happens.'”
I wouldn’t mind if the Safari Pad turned up as a Macbook mini tablet someday soon. That would be “off the charts”!
P.S. Secretly, Ed Colligan has feelers out to several Hardee’s franchises for a position as assistant manager. Let’s wish him well.
Re: Lotus– I’m not at all involved in business or with Lotus Notes. I just recall articles like this and wonder if it may be relevant to some sort of grand strategy.
Won’t be the last time I’m wrong.
I’m still hoping for an OS X driven, vibrating and heated seat warmer for my car. It could happen.
It’s going to be Hell at the Apple Store tomorrow!
Glad I ain’t gonna be there!
Ed Colligan apparently laughed with John Markoff: “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
Well, he’s partly right. They’re not going to just walk in, they’re going to walk in and rob him of $30-40M in revenue and probably more going forward. And they’ll get the last laugh.
“I’m still hoping for an OS X driven, vibrating and heated seat warmer for my car. It could happen.”
that will come out with OS X 10.6.9 “Pussy Galore”
Just read that the move to bring WiFi to the Treo have been dropped due to “battery issues,” and that a bunch of engineers were let go.
Stick a fork in Treo — it’s cooked…
And note that I’m a current Treo owner, who’s been fighting his Treo 300 since I owned it!
“PC guys are not going to just figure this out.”
Jobs is not a “PC guy.”
Ed is clueless. It’s kind of sad. And also funny.
It was the night before iPhone …the anti-analysts are waiting, too. I can hear them breathing. Their dirty little articles are already written though they haven’t gotten any closer to an iPhone than the pixels on their monitor. Among all the praise and tributes for a job well done will be the paid naysayers ..but a little time will pass. The iPhone will be hailed as an achievement worthy of all the praise and they’ll be carrying one, too. They’ll pay for the iPhone with the money they made selling their integrity ..but no matter …it’s not going to stop me from throwing a zune at Dvoraks edsel.
I remember working the GB and having tons of people booking appointments for their new Treo, Blackberry, or whatever they were sold.
The customers would say, “The salesman told me to come here and you guys could sync it to my Mac okay.”
The iPhone should be much easier for Mac users, but we’ll have to see about PC users.
A study in contrasts from the WSJ interview:
Jobs – CEO of Apple:
One might imagine a lot of things down the road.
There’s a lot of things you can imagine down the road.
I’m not too worried about that, but we’ll certainly report to you what happens as it happens.
No, we just don’t comment on future stuff.
When we have something to talk about we’ll give you a holler, but nothing today.
Stephenson, CEO of AT&T
As you see devices migrate towards this type of device, I fully expect you’ll see rate plans migrate towards that as well.
We’re working on the technology ourselves. (Referring to T-mobile’s cell-to-wifi switchover inside home.)
Jobs noncommittal on whether his company will do something in the future. Stephenson aching to make known that his company is working on X. (Stephenson had only 4 answers.)
Besides this, Jobs reveals that they did consider an MVNO but after discussing with AT&T, they decided to go with AT&T instead. Also, VoIP coming from outside vendor – rumor is Jajah. Article also says AT&T possibly will enter “mobile Internet calling”. And 3G chips consumed too much power and physical space.
1. But Jobs is more than willing to point out what others are doing. From the NYTImes article: Mr. Jobs also hinted that there would be announcements about services for corporate users within several weeks. “There’s already corporations who have been running pilots hooking up to Exchange servers and other kinds of mail servers, and they have gone very well,” he said.
Take that, Microsoft and IT!
2. From the NYTImes article: Mr. Stephenson, however, said, “AT&T is interesting in anything that drives more bandwidth requirements — and Apple TV drives significant bandwidth and the iPhone drives significant bandwidth, and so I think it’s a very logical fit.”
Yikes, Cringely might be right.
“Jobs: You’ll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks. We have some pilots going with companies with names you’ll recognize. This won’t be a big issue.”
It is my belief that in a few weeks, when the buzz is fading, we will see a ‘business’ related announcement from Apple, AT&T and Google. The Apple part of the announcement will be tighter integration with MS Exchange, The AT&T announcement will be ‘business’ plans and multi-phone discounts and services, and Google will announce the availability of its collaborative business application packages and yearly service plans for business users.
If Apple opened up the iPhone to individual developers then I think we would see VoIP and VPN applications being quickly ported to the iPhone. Heck, I’m certain that most IT folks would rather have an iPhone than a BlackBerry or Sidekick if they could run their business tools on the iPhone.
I believe that we will eventually see games on the iPhone, and those games will be written by Apple, Electronic Arts, and possibly Nintendo.
I’m not so sure about Lotus Notes, I think that Google can cover the same functionality in a web based application.
One thing that I am certain of, is that Apple is going to be announcing other ‘major’ business partners in the next few months. Some of them will be writing software for the iPhone (under Apples supervision), and the world will slowly begin to realize Steve Job’s idea of a convergence device.
iPhone commercials are heavily prevalent on the “Office” marathon tonight. Almost every commercial break has had one….Wow…