Posted on 06/29/2008 8:35:45 PM PDT by Swordmaker
In an interview with The Financial Times yesterday, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg had this to say when asked about the competition posed by Apple’s iPhone:
“It’s very cool. And Steve Jobs eventually will get old… I like our chances.”
That’s got to be one of the most indelicate utterances by one CEO regarding another.
Mr. Seidenberg is about a decade older than Mr. Jobs, so he can’t possibly be referring to his age with the most unfortunate “Steve Jobs eventually will get old” phrase. He must be referring to Mr. Job’s frail appearance at the Apple WWDC in June.
Apple said Mr. Jobs was suffering from a “common bug” but various pundits and AAPL shorters claimed it was due to his recent brush with pancreatic cancer. Nobody outside of his immediate circle really knows what may or may not be medically worrisome with Mr. Jobs, but why would a competitor’s CEO feel the need to raise it so brazenly?
This chart covering the period from Mr. Jobs’ cancer diagnosis in October 2003 to the present might give a clue (red: Apple, blue: Verizon):
What’s peculiar is that Apple doesn’t directly compete with Verizon: the former is the maker of the iPhone, the latter is a carrier. The competitor Verizon should actually be worried about is AT&T, Apple’s iPhone carrier partner in the U.S.
What should really concern Verizon’s board, however, is why 18 months after the announcement of the iPhone, the Verizon camp hasn’t been able to come up with any remotely credible “iPhone-killer”? They should ask their CEO what other concrete plans he might have to compete with the iPhone other than hoping that Apple’s CEO drops out of the picture due to “old age.” How does the $20.3 million-a-year CEO of a $100 billion company like Verizon display so openly its inability to compete on innovation by placing its “chances” on the demise of another CEO?
Can you imagine another CEO, even such an old adversary like Bill Gates (or even Steve Ballmer, not lacking tackiness otherwise), would ever make such an ill-wishing statement? For shame. The least Mr. Seidenberg can do is to apologize to Mr. Jobs pronto.
Check this site out for a review of the iPhone that’s not from a fanboy. Warning bad language
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
Isn't Al Gore on the board of Apple?
The author can't understand the Queen's English. Ivan was saying this media fad too shall pass.
iPhone, iPod, iHeartMySchnauzer, iSoiledMyself, at some point it isn't cute anymore and hype will out.
While it's true Steve Jobs is not much of a yuppie anymore, I have little doubt that Apple Inc. already has a Borg alcove that he jacks into at night.
Because VERIZON IS A SERVICE PROVIDER, NOT A HARDWARE MAKER! I know I greatly prefer my Samsung i760 to the iPhone, but if I had to have an iPhone-like phone, I could get one from HTC, Samsung, LG, and several others.
Here's a better question: why is Apple so lacking in integrated business solutions like the Windows Mobile, or even RIM platforms? Why did it take Apple 18 months to finally get 3G, when Samsung, Motorola, and LG had it for that long?
That was pretty funny. I was going to get an Iphone, but frankly I didn’t want to leave Verizon because I’ve been with them for years and I like their service. I know others have had bad experiences, but I have not. I’ve been a customer for over a decade (it was two other companies before it was Verizon) and they have always been fair. So I got the LG Voyager but I didn’t like it. I exchanged it for the Blackberry Curve and I LOVE THAT PHONE. The bottom line is that most people only do a few things on their phone. For me, I wanted email and web browsing. The blackberry is great for that and I’m very happy. Although when I see an Iphone, I do get a little pang in my heart.
Isn’t werizon the old gen’l telephone in drag? worthless
I've read it before—probably about the time it was last modified, 17 days after the iPhone was released.
The "review" is not a review. It's a rant by someone who is probably 14 years old. He has never owned an iPhone, never used one, and refuses to. He thinks his Nokia E70 is better. His comparison chart is inaccurate, claiming the iPhone has no Instant Messaging—which it has had since first release. In other words, he is ignorant as well as incoherent.
What's more, I've owned a Nokia similar to that model. The 1.3 inch by 1.6 inch screen is unusable on the internet compared to the 2"x3.5" iPhone's screen. I gave it away.
There is no comparison. The iPhone is better.
The iPhone was released one year ago today, June 29, 2007.
Apple stated at the time that 3G was too power hungry as currently implemented—consuming energy at two times the rate of the 2.5G EDGE network did—and it had too small of coverage area (less than 3% of AT&T's customers could access it). One year later, the 3G chipset consumes far less energy and AT&T's 3G coverage is approaching 10%. Apple is also releasing the iPhone 2 in countries where the coverage is over 50%.
You would be surprised at the number of integrated business solutions that have already been announced for release with iPhone 2.0 on July 17th—many of them developed by the same businesses that developed for RIMM and Windows Mobile but using Apple's SDK that makes development far easier.
Yes. Verizon diverted about $300 worth of payments to their landline service that I never had and are now expecting me to deal with their hoome phone division to get my money back. Meanwhile, my wife and daughter’s cell phone service has been cut off because we wont pay them that money while this process goes through their beaureucracy.
I am in Korea right now and every time I tried to resolve this, I get talked to like I am a little kid, given the runaround, and eventually I get hung up on. Verizon Wireless is a joke. You are taking your sanity into your hands if you ever sign on with them.
A succession plan’s been in place for a while now.
Yes, Verizon is composed of the General Telephone half of the old GTE, plus the old Bell Atlantic.
I was a GTE employee and a GTE wireless customer at the time of the merger, so I heard through company communications how the new company was to be set up.
Now, Bell Atlantic in the late ‘90’s has the worst customer service in the entire telephone industry. Think New York, their base, and you understand. Bell Atlantic was buying a telephone company and wireless network that was substantially larger than what they already had, but they were putting their own top customer service people in charge.
A recipe for disaster for GTE’s customers.
A succession plan’s been in place for a while now.
That is vital. The other thing is that Jobs has made Apple a Unix house, which was his vision before he made NextStep. Without question the tactical decisions which implemented the Mac under Unix were crucial. And now AAPL is exploiting Moore's Law to put OS X in ever smaller devices.But it seems with Snow Leopard that AAPL is perhaps transitioning into number crunch intensive capabilities - probably with an eye on the game market. They already have shown some gaming on the iPhone, and the iPod is a pure entertainment play already - so the iPod Touch might very well prove to be a big-time gaming platform.
My daughter works retail sales for Verizon Wireless. The debut of the iPhone was a minor one month glitch. As soon as people found out about the non replaceable batteries, that plus sticker shock, scared most people away from iPhones.
If iPhones were anything other than a boutique niche, competitors would be all over them already.
And I have an iPhone.
What should really concern Verizon's board, however, is why 18 months after the announcement of the iPhone, the Verizon camp hasn't been able to come up with any remotely credible "iPhone-killer"? They should ask their CEO what other concrete plans he might have to compete with the iPhone other than hoping that Apple's CEO drops out of the picture due to "old age." How does the $20.3 million-a-year CEO of a $100 billion company like Verizon display so openly its inability to compete on innovation by placing its "chances" on the demise of another CEO?Show of hands -- how many Verizon-shorters are there here? ;')
Agree. I spent countless hours on the phone with their reps for a battery issue and they ultimately are sending me a new phone at no charge. They tried to stall me with the “it’s a software problem” but I wouldn’t buy it. Persistance paid off. When my contract is up, I’m switching out of VZ.
The majority of their phone reps are completely clueless. Completely. But they’re great at story-telling.
Consider me a blip on the next radar. I will be dumping Verizon for a 3G iPhone on release day.
For several years, Apple has been compensating for declining hardware margins with new software products. That has been a successful strategy, and they still have the best margins among hardware manufacturers. Apple does a much better job than Microsoft of controlling costs without sacrificing quality. Jobs has built a strong culture in the corporation that will survive him for decades, and their product roadmap looks great, with or without Jobs.
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