11Dec Will Apple Buy AT&T?
Maybe. Lets review the known issues. At WWDC, CEO Steve Jobs mentioned that Apple consists of three parts, the Mac, Music and the iPhone. Obviously, if Apple owned AT&T it could better control the iPhone future without being dependant on a third party, in the US anyway. It could improve music, and video, downloading. It could own a piece of the “cloud”. AT&T does operate one of the largest backbone segments of the internet and this would give Apple a huge advantage over any other vendor, whether it be Microsoft or NBC.
But what about the disadvantages of owning a wireless provider? First, they would have to fix the horrible customer service issues many complain about the not only AT&T, but every other wireless provider. Consensus is, there are no good carriers, just varying degrees of poor. Could Apple resolve such a tough issue? What about all the other phones carried by AT&T? Motorola, Palm, Samsung, etc. Would Apple just drop them? Of course it would be nice to have a nationwide network of “iPhone Stores” to augment it network of Apple Stores. Maybe by the time such a deal does transpire, Apple will have a suite of iPhones to complete its product line. The iPhone 3G, the iPhone Nano, the iPhone this and iPhone that.
This idea is a stretch, but think about the possibilities if they could figure out how to resolve the customer service issues. Isn’t Skype up for sale? What would this do to the Apple TV? Would I be able to download music, the second part of the triangle, from anywhere.
This gives MobileMe a whole new meaning.