“When he worked at telecommunications consulting firm, Adventis, Raj Aggarwal met with Apple’s Steve Jobs twice a week for several months,” Peter Cohan reports for Forbes. “In an August 15 interview, Aggarwal explained how Steve Jobs persuaded AT&T’s Cingular Wireless to provide service for the iPhone with an unprecedented revenue sharing agreement.”
“As most everyone knows, when Jobs first launched the iPhone in June 2007, he cut a deal with AT&T in which Apple would get a portion of AT&T’s revenue,” Cohan reports. “According to the Harvard Business School case, Apple Inc. in 2010, ‘AT&T, the exclusive U.S. operator for the iPhone, agreed to an unprecedented revenue sharing agreement — Apple got about $10 a month from each iPhone customer’s bill – which gave Apple control over distribution, pricing, and branding.'”
Cohan reports, “Aggarwal, whose Adventis consulting stint with Jobs occurred in ‘early 2005,’ said that Jobs was able to pull off the AT&T deal because of his personal involvement in the details of the iPhone, his efforts to build relationships with carriers, his willingness to make demands that others perceived as outrageous, and his nerve to bet major resources on that vision… ‘Jobs met with the CEOs of each carrier. I was struck by the hands-on nature and his desire to make his mark on everything the company was doing. He got deeply involved in the details he cared about. He made it happen,’ said Aggarwal.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve was a master of brute force.
Steve Jobs – Second to none.
True, but this is a story of great negotiating on both sides. Both sides felt they had made a great deal. That is the Holy Grail of deal making.
Selling is more than just having a great product.
There are so many people down the sales path and they all have to be sold.
“Steve was a master of brute force.” – this is too narrow. Steve was a master. – I learned from a Tae Kwon Do Grandmaster … if we can master one thing, we can master anything.
You learn wise “Grasshopper”! So did Steve.
When you design the technology of the future, you can, in turn, dictate the business models of the future.
When Steve Jobs walked into the room and was excited about a product, you kind of sort of had to listen.
MDN Take – poetry
RIP Steve, we still love and miss you and the world could still use your help !
This is what is missing from Apple now I believe. They no longer have negotiating skills. This my be the reason they are having problems getting content providers onto the real Apple TV, and why new products has slowed. Just saying.
Korea will copy!