The iPhone
Sure, it's incredible looking and like any adult male with a penchant for technology, me want one.
But I've held back on dropping six hundy for a few reasons - one, I have a cellphone that works great and (more importantly) my work pays for to the degree I don't ever see a bill. I also tend to believe that one should always wait for a second generation product and not be the guy helping a company work out the bugs, at least when it's costing me $600.
I'm also definitely NOT okay with the fact that in order to use an iPhone, I have to use Cingular (AT&T, whatever). I'm on T-Mobile now, which ain't so great, but it's better than Cingular. I used to use Verizon, and were they a provider of the iPhone, I might have yearned a bit more.
Turns out they could have been there, but turned it down:
Verizon Wireless was the first company offered exclusive access to the iPhone, but turned Apple away because of problems with the proposed business model. Cingular had no such reservations, and will be selling Steve Jobs' "revolution" later this year.
Verizon Communications president and chief operating officer Denny Strigl said: "The iPhone product is something we are happy we aren't the first to market with."
The problem seems to have been Apple's insistence in sharing the call revenue as well as controlling distribution channels and customer service.
Verizon vice president Jim Gerace (one of many veeps at the company) said: "We said no. We have nothing bad to say about the Apple iPhone. We just couldn't reach a deal that was mutually beneficial."
So, let's laugh at Verizon, shall we? And at the least, let's laugh at Denny. He (and Verizon) is saying they are HAPPY to not be the first to market with what is clearly the hippest tech product to come out in at least a few years.
The reason you need to care about this: Almost everyone is like Denny.
Most innovative business people who dream of bizdev imagine that they can be just like Steve Jobs. Come up with a super idea, a useful service, a great gizmo and go to an industry leader. Sign lots of NDAs and go to lots of meetings. Demand that they change their ways in order to make your wonderful innovation a game changer, something that will fix their broken industry and make you both a lot of money.
Hey, Steve Jobs himself couldn't do it at Verizon. The list of big companies that didn't jump on game changing ideas is huge. Almost as long as the list of great companies you didn't buy stock in when you had the chance.
The iPhone/AT&T deal is almost certainly the exception that proves Godin's law of bizdev: No is the default answer. The spreadsheets and the marketing team and the CFO and the lawyers have no trouble at all defending the status quo, because, it's their status quo. They created it and they like it that way. Bizdev deals like this almost always fail because the potential for upside seems too small compared to the mammoth disruption that organizations imagine will beset them.
That's pretty spot on, Mr. Godin.
For a great review of the iPhone, no holds-barred, check this one out at Gizmodo.