There is absolutely no reason they couldnt have sold it on both ATT and TMobile. It was purely marketing.

Sure you can. Apple already has a very impressive distribution channel in place. They sell more ipods in their own stores than all other retailers put together.

Apple is the king of distribution. It would have been very simple to put them on shelves and include a link or form for people to signup with the provider since the phone is unsubsidized anyway.

Now they have limited their audience to those willing to go to ATT, which rules out everyone that hates ATT or those in contract with another provider.

They did the right thing. The main reason Macs work so well (and PCs don't) is that Apple controls the entire platform: they don't have to worry about running into wierdo Chinese video cards from 1987 and the like, so they have a closed system that they can optimize. They took the same approach with the phone. They know all the services they need are there, they're configured from the factory, and they will not be inundated with calls asking where to put the IP for their WAP gateway and whether the bearer is PS or CSD.

The only option they had was to pick a carrier with enough reach to get them worthwhile numbers. Adding T-Mobile to the mix would have doubled the complexity and doubled the risk of support nightmares.

Above call quality, above how the browser renders a page, above battery life, above everything, this handset must get "the Apple experience" right on the first try or it's doomed. It has to "just work".

If I were Apple, I would have done exactly the same thing.

Sealed SIM???
 

I friend of mine works at an AT&T store here, and he was telling me that there have been unconfirmed rumors that the SIM card will be "sealed" in the iPhones...forcing them to work like programmable ESNs do on CDMA networks. This would have two MAJOR drawbacks if true:

1. The SIMs (according to my friend) cannot be reused or assigned to another customer. Therefore, once activated the phone could never be transferred to another user (it would only work as a iPod).

2. Any existing Cingular/AT&T user would have to ditch their current SIM and be re-assigned to the new SIM inside the iPhone. This means if you wanted to go to the beach an leave your $600 iPhone at home you wouldn't be able to pop out the SIM and put it into a "beater phone" (something I do quite frequently with my Treo and a RAZR).

Both my friend and one of his co-workers said that if this turns out to be true its going to be a HUGE problem and something Apple and AT&T would have to change in any future generations. I find it hard to believe they would do something that stupid, but in looking at the pictures of the iPhone online I cannot see any discernable SIM slot (nor have I found any documentation describing one).

Anyone have any insight into this? :confused:

Craig

Companies like Motorola and Nokia have been doing this without problems for quite some time.

For the American market partnering with ATT probably increased their potential market. Sure they cut out a bit of the gadget geeks, but they opened up the "I don't even know what a SIM is" market - a much bigger market (and also one more in tune with Apple products :p )


As for rumours - Apple's hype machine thrives on them. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

No, they haven't.

That's so far off-base I don't even know what to say.

Being aware of what it's taking to pull off what is already being pulled off for operations, distribution and support of these, I gotta say...

yes, Apple's logistics and distribution is really, really good. It's smaller, so it doesn't get the credit for efficient logistics and distribution that the biger boys get, but having been a part of putting together and analyzing the metrics, investigating the exceptions, as well as the execution in several capacities, it's impressive.

but, there's a lot of change that takes place to bring online a new product. any product. a product that is as unique as the iPhone introduces even more change by default. Add in a seemingly simple form that people can fill out on the Web and you reach a huge tipping point. Making this happen for millions of buyers, getting the information to the service provider 100% of the time, working out the format in which that information is sent and verifying that the format is successfully transmitted and translated. There's got to be a way to log in, and the whole thing is going to involve the Web systems, the order processing systems, the systems that register products, the systems that send the information to partner systems, etc. Development, testing, implementation -- on top of what was/is already taking place -- would be insanity.

Your post made me laugh inside, and I shared it with a former colleague who often laments to me about how crazy it is right now, as it is, stretching all systems and people to the limit. The best part: 06/30 is Apple's fiscal quarter end. This is when everyone in Operations already works about 1.5x-2x their normal schedule to be sure all goals are met and numbers are hit precisely. Now on top of that one of the biggest product launches in Apple's history is taking place the day before.

It's fun being a part of the madness, but in this case, it's even more fun knowing the degree of madness in the sausage factory and not being a part of it. :D

Back to the point: A web form may seem like a piece of cake, but there's more to it than that.

There is?

Amazon, InPhonic, Wirefly and 100's of other have been able to make online cellular provisioning possible. Apple of all companies could easily pull that off.

Nokia and Motorola havent been selling cell phones on multiple networks for some time? Am I missing something? I dont think that I am. I can buy a Nokia or a Moto or a BB or any of a number of cell phones on 2 or 3 different US carriers and they work fine on the carrier that they are sold for. Other than looking nice, Im not sure that this is much different than any other cell phone. It does call, web, email and music. And so do a couple dozen others. It may do it nicer in terms of interface, but that doesnt mean it is inherently harder to sell than a high end Nokia for instance.

What Alanw is referring to is the setup of the phone.

I challenge you to buy an unlocked unbranded Motorola in the local store and get it working perfectly on your network within 30 minutes.

Everything from the GPRS/3G settings to the MMS gateway have to be programmed.

Granted, some operators can do a decent OTA configuration, but in 9 out of 10 times only on models they sell.

I bet you didn't have your TyTN up and running all that fast either. Every time I do a rom update it takes me 25 minutes to get all the settings back to normal just so I can connect, get my email and send an MMS.

a sim tray is clearly visible in pictures of the iphone.

http://images.apple.com/iphone/galle...1_20070621.png

where do these rumours come from, anyway?

im in vegas at the moment and stopped by an AT&T store, was told that the Fashion Show mall here which has an apple store, would be selling them unlocked on the release date.

Since now i find myself without socks, im going there, and will report back.

I agree with this but it isnt what I am talking about. Im not talking about unlocked and unbranded. I am talking about why they are only selling them branded on ONE network. There is no reason they cant sell them branded, and preset to either TMobile or ATT. You can buy whatever stupid Moto RazrX42 is out now on multiple networks, preset for that network and it wont require any more setup from one network to another.

One thing that appears to be unique is the HTML mail? It probably needs a decent processor and RAM for rendering it.

Same for playing videos on the screen. I think iTunes Store videos are now 640x480, with hints of HD soon? So does it downscale to 320x480 or whatever the resolution is?