When Worlds Collide
Saturday, June 30, 2007
On the one hand you've got AT&T whose name conjures up images of blue suits, IBM, and my dad. "No one ever got fired for choosing IBM" was the old phrase, and it was just as true for AT&T. They are big, powerful, and I can tell you from personal experience do not rate the individual high on their list of priorities.
On the other hand you have Apple, almost the "anti-corp" in a lot of ways. Until recently not accepted in many business circles beyond graphic design, music, etc... very "artsy" and hip.
So now they are working together and the differences are glaring. Obviously a lot of time and effort went into the launch of the iPhone. It was determined (by Apple I am assuming) that things would go more smoothly if activation was handled through iTunes at home instead of in line at the store. It saved the need to train Apple Store people on activations, and it kept customers from having to wait inside AT&T stores for very long after buying their phone.But then the activations failed. No doubt this is because of the shear numbers of customers trying to activate the phones at once. Since there's probably been nothing like this before, its understandable too. But I'm sure that its hard for Apple to swallow. I can almost picture the conversation in the meeting: AT&T trying to tell Steve that this is the way the real world works... you can't please all of the people all of the time, while Steve sits there and insists that they do. After all, Apple has gained so much market share in recent years by paying attention to every aspect of the user experience (something that easy to do when your user base is small) while AT&T immediately calculates what percentage of failures they will have and moves on.
To the Apple users this can be very frustrating. Dubbed the iBrick by some attempting to create a controversy, the experience thus far hasn't been horrible, its just "not Apple".
Cali Lewis (an obvious fangirl if you watch her show) went so far as to take back her two new iPhones not because of the gadgets, but because of the AT&T double-speak regarding the pricing. I'm sure that she will change her mind soon and go get an iPhone; perhaps she's like me and just waiting for version 2 ('cause you know if Apple stays true to form that will be out sometime before Christmas).
So will Apple end up changing the business inside the behemoth that is AT&T, will it be the other way around, or will the whole thing just end like other similar partnerships Apple has forged in the past?
Labels: apple, att, cali lewis, iphone
posted by Russell @ 10:30 AM,
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