“When Steve Jobs released the first iPhone in June 2007, Apple Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. were worth almost exactly the same in the public markets: About $115 billion,” Dennis K. Berman reports for The Wall Street Journal. “What came over the next eight years was one of the greatest transfers of power and wealth in corporate history. Mobile phone operators — who had been brutish, intractable gatekeepers to the customer — were turned into Apple’s lackeys.”
“Today Apple is worth about $735 billion, nearly double that of Verizon and AT&T Inc. combined,” Berman reports. “The carriers still love to romance the ‘power of the network,’ but this has the feel of a crumbling empire, vainly proclaiming its domain over places long overrun.”
“Neither Verizon nor AT&T is going away. But their place in the world seems ever more insecure. What is their purpose in this converged world? AT&T has taken a path into the past, agreeing to buy satellite-TV operator DirecTV for nearly $50 billion,” Berman reports. “Verizon is spending $4.4 billion on AOL, a loose confederation of advertising-technology businesses, random “content” plays, and a beguiling, money-leaking adventure called the Huffington Post.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looks like desperation has finally driven Verizon’s powers that be completely nuts.