On 2007-02-02, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> Dennis Ferguson wrote:
>> On 2007-02-01, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>> Exactly. But Apple has worldwide selling power, and if they goal was
>> the biggest total addressable market with a single initial product then
>> a GSM product can't be topped.
>
> It's pretty trivial to switch the radio portion of a design from CDMA to
> GSM, there are many phones that are available in both technologies. If
> Apple was worried about only doing one initial product, then they would
> have approached Cingular and not bothered with going to Verizon first.

It is true that the design work to be done to switch technologies is
not so difficult for a not-too-price-sensitive platform, but it is still
the case that for volume manufacturing you really want to make sure you
can manage building a single product in sufficient quantities before you try
to manage adding part numbers. For a fairly recent example of a hit phone
design, Motorola was selling plain old V3's for well over a year
before there were V3c's, let alone V3i's or V3m's or V3x's, or V3xx's,
even though Motorola was already building other phones using all these
technologies and should hence have had an easier time than Apple with
a technology switch.

Despite this, it is clear that Apple at least considered doing a CDMA
phone first or they wouldn't have talked to Verizon. I don't think
we know that they went to Verizon first, however, and the rather
outrageous things Verizon claims they were asked to do to get the
business don't strike me as the final bargaining position you take
with your first choice. We'll have to wait to find out just what
Cingular agreed to for the business, but I'll be surprised if what
Cingular agreed to was anything close to what Verizon claim they were
asked for (though who knows...).

Dennis Ferguson