iPhone News Updated

iPhone 5 release date and $80 billion: why Tim Cook can’t buy Verizon

iPhone 5 release date and $80 billion: why Tim Cook can’t buy Verizon

Memo to new Apple CEO Tim Cook: unveil an iPhone 5 release date so you can put the news of you predecessor’s resignation behind you, and then get to the task of executing whatever plan you and the Apple braintrust have in mind for that eighty billion dollars you’ve got lying around in cash. But don’t buy Verizon or AT&T.

The resignation of Steve Jobs from Apple’s CEO position is significant external news but doesn’t change the way in which Apple has been operating. Cook has been acting CEO for some time now, with Jobs officially on “medical leave” but always at company headquarters, heading up whichever products he sees fit. Jobs is also staying on board as chairman, which means he still controls the company. And Tim Cook is his hand-picked successor, which means the corporate vision doesn’t change.

But job one for Cook is to bury the story of his ascent, as it’s not one which helps Apple. The sooner it’s buried, the better. And the iPhone 5, which Apple has been typically silent about even as the iPhone 4 era has inexplicably dragged on yell beyond its expected year, is the only story big enough to push “Steve Jobs quits” from the headlines.It’s also long overdue.

Apple understandably didn’t want to draw attention to the next iPhone until it’s ready, as sales of the current iPhone 4 would have suffered in the mean time. That’s left current iPhone users and would-be switchers unsure of just how long they’re supposed to wait for the iPhone 5 to find a release date, whether the iPhone 4 makes sense in the mean time, and why the delay is happening.

Silence was okay back when it easily self-explainable in the minds of consumers by a mere component shortage or some such. But now that Apple’s iconic CEO just resigned and people are asking whether Steve Jobs is dying, remaining silent about the iPhone 5 is bad business. Apple must make clear that the company will continue to function efficiently and aggressively with Tim Cook at the helm.

Nevermind that he’s already been occupying the CEO chair in a “temporary” capacity for so long that nothing has actually changed regarding his job duties. Publicly visible and reassuring moves must come now. And that leads to Apple’s cash position, which was last reported at just shy of eighty billion and has assuredly surpassed the mark by now…

Jobs, who sometimes gives away a bit too much with his coy answers to analyst questions, was asked if Apple planned to do with the cash. He said they were “keeping the powder dry.” He was then asked whether Apple planed to buy a cellphone carrier such as T-Mobile. He said Apple had bigger aspirations. Read into that however you like, but it sure sounds like Apple is planning to get into the carrier business in a bigger way than that. One move would be to acquire a larger carrier such as Verizon or AT&T, while presumably still continuing to offer the iPhone 5 through the other.

Another, more Apple-like move would be to build its own in-house cell carrier in the U.S. from the ground up, possibly acquiring regional carriers around the country in order to string them together as it lays down its own 4G LTE network. So many U.S. customers are either habitually loyal or contractually loyal to their current carrier that the iPhone would need to remain on existing carriers either way. But such a move would give Apple the ability to free the iPhone 5 from primary constraint which holds it back as a product: it’s available on the same crappy carriers as its competitors. Apple could change that in a big way…

Step one: start putting an in-house carrier together, one way or another. Step two: launch the iPhone 5 (or perhaps by that time a future iPhone) on the in-house network along with the major outside carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Allow customers to decide who they want to do their iPhone carrier business with. Step three: offer unlimited monthly data, superior network quality which eliminates dead spots and dropped calls, and charge prices similar to the existing carriers. Step four: watch iPhone sales soar as even those on the fence about the iPhone find themselves unable to resist Apple’s superior network quality. Step five: recoup the investment and loss-leader nature of the network thanks to the oodles of new iPhone 5 sales.

It would be a long gradual process which would no doubt alienate the existing carriers, who are already prone to over-promote their own Android phones because they have more control over them. And it’s not something Tim Cook is going to embark on unless Steve Jobs has signed off on it. But it’s the logical step for a company with an absurd amount of cash sitting in a pile and a single problem holding back its iPhone 5, iPad 3, and other future network-based mobile products.

[Thanks: http://www.beatweek.com]

Comments are closed.