According to an article in Wired last year, the most significant
difference in bringing the iphone onto the network was that the
manufacturer's UI design (e.g. Visual Voicemail) required that the
carrier allow an outside party dictate some engineering specs. This
was a big change for any carrier. Not only was there the issue of will
the carrier be willing to give up that sort of control, but also the
question of could they rise to the challenge of integrating such a
drastically different product. My recollection from the article was
that Verizon didn't dismiss the opportunity out of hand, but had
worked for a period of some months before they walked away. I'll have
to dig that issue up to see if I'm correct. If that was the case, it
might have been the combination of loss of control, cost, and
engineering challenge that they didn't want to risk not delivering on.
That's just speculation on my part though.
ken
On Jan 11, 2009, at 9:48 PM, James Fraser wrote:
> Businesses like to make money, and my own understanding of what
> Apple offered Verizon at the time (as seen through the haze of
> retrospect) is that the terms of the agreement were so unfavorable
> that Verizon did indeed turn them down flat. Businesses that don't
> see any value in a given proposed agreement may very well reject it
> out of hand.
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Received on Sun Jan 11 23:21:43 2009
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