Who would have carry that Public Enemy Number One come out of Apple ’s Worldwide Developer Conference would be AT&T ? I mean , nobody get laid the sound party , or the cablegram party , or the electric society . ( As a kid I did love “ The Electric Company , ” but these days as a homeowner my local utility features many more broadside and much lessRita Moreno , thereby diminishing my exuberance . ) But the outright booing of AT&T , egged on by Apple executives ? I was aghast .
This is not to say that AT&T does n’t merit the criticism . Presumably Apple chose to single out its U.S. mailman better half out of foiling with AT&T ’s intransigence , as a negotiating ploy , or a little number of both . But the fact persist , Apple provided the set - up . First , by mention AT&T as an afterthought among carrier married person who would be offering MMS support on the day iPhone 3.0 shipped . As Apple ’s fourth-year vice president of iPhone software Scott Forstall said :
Now , MMS requires carrier financial support as well . Twenty - nine of our newsboy partners in 76 countries around the cosmos will suffer MMS at the launch of iPhone oculus sinister 3.0 . In the United States , AT&T will be quick to defend MMS later this summer . Next .
Where’s Waldo?
Where ’s Waldo?That foreign singling out of AT&T as a laggard ( to utilise a classic Steve Jobsism ) produce more laughs than razzing among the consultation of developers and penis of the sensitive . The boos fall on a tardy sloping trough , when Forstall promoted the fresh tethering function of iPhone OS 3.0 — a feature declare in March that let your estimator to divvy up the iPhone ’s connection to the Internet if you ’re somewhere without Wi - Fi . Forstall said :
Like MMS , this necessitate mail carrier support . We have 22 attack aircraft carrier partners in 42 countries around the world that will corroborate this at the launch of iPhone 3.0 , and more will be undulate out … later .
This fourth dimension Forstall did n’t remark AT&T. He did n’t have to . The accompany slide featured Apple carrier partners great and small , such as LuxGSM ( Luxembourg ) , Telkomsel ( Indonesia ) , VimpelCom ( Russia ) , Telenor ( Scandanavia ) , and Turkcell ( Turkey ) , not to name the European heavyweights O2 , T - Mobile , and Vodafone and even much - badmouth Canadian carrier wave Rogers . The intimate AT&T Earth logo was nowhere to be seen . And thus begin a metre of boos along with plenty of gibelike laughter .
Now , it ’s easy to make pit from out here . For all I recognise , AT&T has utterly good reasons why MMS support is n’t coming until later this summer and tethering is acypher wrapped in an enigma , muffle in secret sauce . But the company has bonk about these feature for at least as long as the world , which would amount to three month . And Apple ’s pointed slides point out that it ’s not very glad about the situation either .
Searching for answers
And so I have to ask , what the heck is AT&T think ? The iPhone is , in many way , a society - defining mathematical product for AT&T ’s cellular branch , the former Cingular Wireless . AT&T has been flood with new customers who have change to the service , many despite qualm about the quality of its web and reporting , altogether due to the allure of Apple ’s breakthrough twist . In the U.S. , the iPhone is perhaps the most of import single cellular handset in existence . And now a young variant of the phone ’s onboard software is about to found , with several new capability — and AT&T is nowhere to be found .
It just does n’t make mother wit , and not just from the perspective of fanatical iPhone fans who will download the 3.0 software update as soon as it ’s available Wednesday . It does n’t make stage business sense to me , either . Surely AT&T is cognizant that many iPhone vendee are early - adopters , citizenry who encompass product that are on the disregard edge of newfangled applied science . These are the people who will use MMS and tether on the iPhone , if it ’s available .
MMS messages , if embraced by the iPhone - using community , are an chance for AT&T to makemoney , and last sentence I condition , AT&T was a net income - making business concern , not a bunch of hippies living in ayurt . And then there ’s tethering , which presumptively AT&T will appoint an extra monthly fee for its customers to use . It ’s the opportunity to drop another $ 20 to $ 50 on untold numbers of monthly iPhone beak . The rather , the good !
And of course , beyond check these money - making features and making the early - adoptive parent iPhone crowd tempestuous at them , AT&T ’s also incurred Apple ’s wrath . Now , I freely admit that this integral thing may just be the dance of two heavy corporation who are lock in some tough negotiations over the future of their relationship together . It ’s not just a negotiation about exclusivity , though presumably it is that . It ’s also about financial term .
Both companies require the dear plenty possible , of course . But these daylight , Apple really has all the leveraging . It ’s catch a pop product , and AT&T must surely know that the day Verizon offers an upgraded iPhone ( even if AT&T also offers that model , but especially if it does n’t ! ) is the day that a steady flow of its customers start out kissing it arrivederci and switch to the competition . envisage the effect on profits and even the caller ’s fund price .
It ’s possible that AT&T really wants to offer these service , but is quite simply a dupe of the iPhone ’s success , a success that terrorize the executive who are in charge of AT&T ’s data web . We ’ve seen house of this already : although the fellowship allows other phones to hunt down Sling Media ’s SlingPlayer video package , Apple ( presumably with AT&T ’s steering ) decline to let the iPhone translation of SlingPlayer work on cellular web . The ground , I have to assume , is that nobody is really using SlingPlayer on those other chopine . But AT&T is deathly afraid that the millions of iPhone users on its mesh might actually use the product , and play the web to its knees .
Perhaps AT&T is afraid that all those iPhone users with their MMS photos and videos would overwhelm the web . Not to mention the low-down scourge of the bandwidth that might be used via tethering . Perhaps this stalling tactic is simply to build up AT&T ’s internet so that those features function well . But if that ’s the case , then the issue stay : if AT&T ’s connection ca n’t rightfully defy the iPhone , perhaps it ’s not the best partner for Apple to have .
Know your customers
Floating in the background knowledge here is , of course , the anger many users are feeling about not qualifying for the lowest Leontyne Price on the fresh iPhone 3 G S. I empathise with the angriness , because it ’s readily unmistakable that many people did n’t empathize what the ramification of signing that two - year subsidized contract for an iPhone 3 G would be when Apple came out with a whizzy raw iPhone less than a year later . The subsidization plot is the home interest of the cellular manufacture in the United States , and AT&T is no different .
Without get into the upgrade wrath itself , have me ask this question : Why is n’t AT&T dissimilar ? Being the single iPhone aircraft carrier in the U.S. was a huge chance for AT&T. So why did n’t it use the iPhone to make its customer experience different , too ? Did n’t AT&T gain that the iPhone audience was lead to be populated with people who , by the very fact that they bosom the iPhone , tend to need to habituate the late and greated piece of technology around ? Did n’t AT&T have sex that signal those masses to a standard two - year obligation would directly jar with their desire for that next example in a yr ’s sentence ?
I am not saying that AT&T should offer exploiter something for nothing . ( Of course we ’d all like a freepony . ) What I am say is , AT&T could have pass along the terminal figure of its subsidy well , especially look at that many of its customers are Apple fans who may be used to purchasing the Next Big Thing as soon as it arrives on the panorama .
And here ’s a thought : maybe AT&T should have provide a plan for the other adoptive parent . Some sort of iPhone Assurance Plan , in which you ’d pay spare every calendar month in guild to warrant yourself the low price for new iPhone hardware once it ’s announced . Yes , that ’s a marketing fast one — moving the toll out of the phone and into the monthly bill . But it ’s the same magic that makes subsidized phones so much more appealing ( at least , for many consumer ) than expensive phones with lower monthly bills .
From the exterior , there ’s just no way to know why AT&T does the matter that it does . But given Apple ’s attitude , the reaction from the bunch at WWDC , and the anger out on the net , something is patently wrong . It make me marvel if AT&T , as a company , is simply incompetent of switch the agency it does business , even if the changes might end upbenefitingit in the end .
Back in the Cingular days , the company took a chance on Apple and the iPhone , and it pay off . It ’s time for the company to keep taking hazard and being aggressive in sustain ( and , yes , commercialise to ) iPhone substance abuser . Because the way things are look aright now , AT&T Wireless ’s single greatest asset is poised to take the air out the threshold and — as soon as the contracts lapse — take meg of its customer with it .
[ Jason Snell is Macworld ’s editorial director . He has never worked for a phone ship’s company . ]
