The underlying principal of a good business is always based on a sound product. [Otherwise what can you sell?] But when I was reading this article, the extent to which the phone companies have become “Mafia” is pretty apparent. It obviously took another Moghul like Steve Jobs, and a in your face “ha ha” product like the i-phone to put back the power to products.
But as important as the iPhone has been to the fortunes of Apple and
ATT, its real impact is on the structure of the $11 billion-a-year
US mobile phone industry. For decades, wireless carriers have treated
manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to
dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what
features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as
cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and
lock them into using the carriers’ proprietary services. But the iPhone
upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right
phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue.
Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is
racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one that
the carriers approve of. “The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave,” says Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray.
Read more in Wired