The Zeitgeist

Quite a big deal has been made of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s diarrhea of the mouth this past week where he more or less pre-announced a 3G iPhone coming in 2008 from Apple.  Cringely esitmates that this may well cost Apple over $1 billion in holiday sales, and that this was a calculated effort on the part of the AT&T CEO to send a message to Apple and Jobs about who is really in charge of their alliance.  That may well be true…

 I have a slightly different take… CEO’s who shoot from the hip like this usually do so because they think either their cojones are bigger than anyone else’s, or they think they are smarter than their firm’s contract lawyers. Or both.   I mean let’s get real for a second… we’re talking about Apple here… does anyone think for even a microsecond that there wasn’t a executive level NDA in place barring AT&T from disclosing anything about un-announced Apple products?  Then there is that “exclusive 5-year deal” — there are lots and lots of clauses in contracts as big as the one Apple cut with AT&T that gave them that “exclusive 5-year deal.”  In order to get a 5-year deal there are probably several dozen or more clauses in the contract pertaining to “misappropriation of trade secrets” and/or “unauthorized disclosure” and/or”material breach” and/or “revocation” and/or “bad faith” and/or “material damages to Apple’s business”  …any or ALL of which will allow Apple to pursue other deals with other wireless carriers and most likely force AT&T to make up the lost revenue out of its own coffers…How much you wanna bet that AT&T’s lawyers (to say nothing of the AT&T’s of directors) are taking motor-mouth Stephenson out to the woodshed this weekend for a thorough  beating..?   

Stephenson’s ego may have cost Apple some level of sales — we won’t know until after the holiday season wraps up — on the other hand,  Stephenson may have just given every other US carrier a good bit of Holiday cheer with the news that iPhones will be in their stockings this year…  I’m betting that Jobs, being one of the smarter business people on the planet (having been royally screwed over in the by people with egos as large as Bill Gates) learned that people with egos like Stephenson (a Gates-wannabe)  just don’t know when to shut the f#%k up.  

I think Jobs was counting on it — he got the big bang and all the buzz he wanted, and if AT&T did the right thing - fine; they’d have their 5-year deal - but he knew it couldn’t last: AT&T would somehow find itself in material breach of it’s 5-year deal and Apple would walk away being able to get the iPhone in the hands of every carrier… and rake in billions more from a public that’s dying to get iPhones.

3G iPhone in 2008?  Sure.  That was always a no brainer… 3G iPhones from lots of carriers?  Almost a certainty now, thanks to Randall Stephenson’s ego.   

Tags: iPhone Apple AT&T Steven P Jobs Randall Stephenson

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