iPhone - The Untold Story. Part 2
This is the second part of the translation of the article “The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry.” The first part is made unno and is here .
Sigman and his team were immediately fascinated by the idea of the iPhone. Cingular's strategy, like the strategies of other operators, was aimed at ensuring that users turned to their mobile devices more and more often for mobile access to the network. Business needs for network interaction went to zero, price wars were destroying profits. The iPhone, with its promising ability to download music, video and use Internet functionality at Wi-Fi speed, could lead to an increase in the number of users creating traffic. And in this case, the object of obtaining juicy profits were large amounts of data, not voice communication.
The Cingular team was able to understand that the wireless business model should change. Operators accustomed subscribers to their networks as invaluable resources, and the phones themselves turned out to be worthless consumer items. This strategy has served everyone perfectly. By subsidizing the purchase of cheap phones, operators simplified the entry of new users into the network — by trapping them into long-term contract traps, which led to a steady stream of profits. But wireless access to the network ceased to be a luxury, it became a necessity. The biggest challenge the operators faced was not the search for neophytes. Now the main task was to steal each other's users. The simple temptation of low-cost users no longer worked. Sigman and his team wanted to offer unique and desirable devices that are not available for other networks. Who could have created such a device better than Jobs?
For Cingular, Apple’s ambitions were both alluring and annoying. Comfortable communication with the iPod manufacturer was supposed to give the company a brand of sex appeal. And, undoubtedly, some other operator will sign a contract with Jobs, if Cingular refuses - Jobs made it very clear that he will sell his idea to anyone who listens. But no operator will give anyone the flexibility and control that Jobs wanted to get, Sigman realized that he would get in trouble by insisting to the executive directors and board members on concluding a deal with Jobs on the conditions offered to them.
Sigman was right. Negotiations with Sigman and his team, who were endlessly worried that they were losing too much, could have been dragged out for a year or more. On the other hand, Jobs met with several Verizon executives, who immediately gave him a turnaround. For years, operators tied users and suppliers to using and selling services through their closed networks. Trusting most of Jobs’s control, Cingular risked turning its vaunted and expensive network into a channel rather than a source of information. The Sigman team made a simple bet: using the iPhone will spur traffic, which will create a profit that exceeds the loss if the source of information is lost.
')
Jobs was not going to wait for the resolution of difficult issues of the transaction. By the end of November 2005, eight months before the signing of the final agreement, he instructed the engineers to work on the project in full force. Negotiations with Cingular were difficult, but compared to the technical issues that Apple faced, they were nothing. First of all, the question arose, what operating system to use. Since 2002, from the first designation of the idea of the Apple phone, mobile electronics has become much more powerful and now theoretically could support some versions of the well-known Macintosh OS. But the operating system needed to be significantly reduced and rewritten: the iPhone OS should occupy several hundred megabytes, about a tenth of OS X.
Before starting the creation of the iPhone, Jobs and CEOs had to solve this problem. Engineers carefully looked at Linux, which has already been rewritten for use on mobile devices, but Jobs rejected the idea of using someone else's software. They created a prototype phone built into the iPod, using the scroll wheel as a dialer, but he could only select and dial numbers — but not use the network to its full potential. So in early 2006, immediately after Apple engineers completed their annual work on remaking OS X to work on Intel processors, Apple began the process of rewriting OS X again, this time for the iPhone.
The choice of operating system was, at least, a matter in which Apple executives were well oriented. They were less prepared to discuss the intricacies of the mobile world: such things as antenna design, radio frequency radiation, and modeling device behavior on the network. In order to make sure that the tiny iPod antenna does its job efficiently, Apple has spent millions of dollars on the acquisition and collection of special robotic laboratories. In order to make sure that the radiation from the iPhone doesn’t hurt users, Apple created models of human heads — reasonably accurate, with a viscous mass to simulate brain density — and measured the results. To predict iPhone performance on the network, Apple engineers purchased about a dozen radio frequency simulators worth a million dollars each. Even Apple’s experience in creating iPod screens did not help the company in creating iPhone screens that Jobs understood as he carried a prototype in his pocket: to reduce scratching, the touchscreen should be made of glass rather than hard plastic, as was the case with iPod. One of the insiders estimated Apple’s expenses on creating an iPhone at about $ 150 million.
Passing through all this, Jobs maintained the highest level of secrecy. Inside the company, the project was known as P2, briefly from Purple2 (the first iPod phone thrown into the dustbin of history was called Purple 1). The teams were divided and distributed throughout the campus in Cupertino, California. During the visits of Apple's directors to Cingular, they were registered as employees of Infineon, the company that manufactures phone transmitters for Apple. Even the software and hardware development teams of the iPhone were divided: the engineers who created the hardware worked with circuits containing fake software, while the programmers worked on the software stuffing of integrated circuits placed in wooden boxes. By January 2007, when Jobs announced the appearance of the iPhone on Macworld, only about 30 main people of the project saw the device.
The laudatory songs of the iPhone were so sweet that it was easy not to notice its flaws. The original price of $ 599 was too high (and then dropped to $ 399). The phone was tied to the poor AT & T EDGE network. Users could not use the search in the letters or record a video. The browser did not launch flash or java.
But all this did not matter. The iPhone broke the wireless structure with the operators in the center and opened up a bunch of benefits for consumers, developers, manufacturers - and, in the long run, the operators themselves. Consumers got an easy-to-use handheld computer. With the participation of older PC brothers, the iPhone is claiming a development that will make it an even more powerful tool. In February, Jobs will announce the release of a package for developers, so that everyone can write programs for the device.
Producers, meanwhile, are enjoying the new power of trade deals, independent of the operators with whom they have been dealing for decades. Operators who are watching the increase in the share of AT & T users flounder in search of a competing device and seem to admit defeat. Manufacturers get more control levers through the products they produce, users get great opportunities using new devices.
Application developers are set to provide more functionality as telecom operators destroy their strategies for setting traps for users. T-Mobile and Sprint are now partners in Google’s Android alliance, with an operating system in which the ease of creating mobile applications by independent developers is absolute. Verizon, one of the most inflexible operators, announced in November that it would open its networks for use with any compatible device. AT & T made a similar announcement later. In the end, this whole process will lead to a completely new wireless interaction, in which applications run on any device on any network. Over time, this will give the wireless world the same flexibility and functionality that the Internet today possesses.
It may turn out that the nightmares of telecom operators will come true and the iPhone will give power to consumers, developers and manufacturers, turning the wireless networks into “wordless channels”. But by encouraging more innovations, network operators, by contrast, may become even more valuable. Consumers will spend more time on devices, and therefore on networks, thereby increasing the volume of payments and producing more profit for everyone. According to information from Paul Roth, president of AT & T Marketing, telecom operators are exploring new products and services — such as mobile banking — in order to get even more profit from the features of the iPhone. “We approach the market from different angles,” says Roth. In other words, that development leap, which telecom operators have been afraid of for so long, may be just what they need. Steve Jobs opened their eyes to this.
This text is the second part of the translation of the article “The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry” by Fred Vogelstein, published January 9, 2008 in Wired.
www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone?currentPage=all
When reprinting the translation, please refer to the original and the present text.
Authors of the translation will be grateful for comments, comments, corrections of possible inaccuracies and participation in the correction of the translation of the article.
Sigman and his team were immediately fascinated by the idea of the iPhone. Cingular's strategy, like the strategies of other operators, was aimed at ensuring that users turned to their mobile devices more and more often for mobile access to the network. Business needs for network interaction went to zero, price wars were destroying profits. The iPhone, with its promising ability to download music, video and use Internet functionality at Wi-Fi speed, could lead to an increase in the number of users creating traffic. And in this case, the object of obtaining juicy profits were large amounts of data, not voice communication.
The Cingular team was able to understand that the wireless business model should change. Operators accustomed subscribers to their networks as invaluable resources, and the phones themselves turned out to be worthless consumer items. This strategy has served everyone perfectly. By subsidizing the purchase of cheap phones, operators simplified the entry of new users into the network — by trapping them into long-term contract traps, which led to a steady stream of profits. But wireless access to the network ceased to be a luxury, it became a necessity. The biggest challenge the operators faced was not the search for neophytes. Now the main task was to steal each other's users. The simple temptation of low-cost users no longer worked. Sigman and his team wanted to offer unique and desirable devices that are not available for other networks. Who could have created such a device better than Jobs?
For Cingular, Apple’s ambitions were both alluring and annoying. Comfortable communication with the iPod manufacturer was supposed to give the company a brand of sex appeal. And, undoubtedly, some other operator will sign a contract with Jobs, if Cingular refuses - Jobs made it very clear that he will sell his idea to anyone who listens. But no operator will give anyone the flexibility and control that Jobs wanted to get, Sigman realized that he would get in trouble by insisting to the executive directors and board members on concluding a deal with Jobs on the conditions offered to them.
Sigman was right. Negotiations with Sigman and his team, who were endlessly worried that they were losing too much, could have been dragged out for a year or more. On the other hand, Jobs met with several Verizon executives, who immediately gave him a turnaround. For years, operators tied users and suppliers to using and selling services through their closed networks. Trusting most of Jobs’s control, Cingular risked turning its vaunted and expensive network into a channel rather than a source of information. The Sigman team made a simple bet: using the iPhone will spur traffic, which will create a profit that exceeds the loss if the source of information is lost.
')
Jobs was not going to wait for the resolution of difficult issues of the transaction. By the end of November 2005, eight months before the signing of the final agreement, he instructed the engineers to work on the project in full force. Negotiations with Cingular were difficult, but compared to the technical issues that Apple faced, they were nothing. First of all, the question arose, what operating system to use. Since 2002, from the first designation of the idea of the Apple phone, mobile electronics has become much more powerful and now theoretically could support some versions of the well-known Macintosh OS. But the operating system needed to be significantly reduced and rewritten: the iPhone OS should occupy several hundred megabytes, about a tenth of OS X.
Before starting the creation of the iPhone, Jobs and CEOs had to solve this problem. Engineers carefully looked at Linux, which has already been rewritten for use on mobile devices, but Jobs rejected the idea of using someone else's software. They created a prototype phone built into the iPod, using the scroll wheel as a dialer, but he could only select and dial numbers — but not use the network to its full potential. So in early 2006, immediately after Apple engineers completed their annual work on remaking OS X to work on Intel processors, Apple began the process of rewriting OS X again, this time for the iPhone.
The choice of operating system was, at least, a matter in which Apple executives were well oriented. They were less prepared to discuss the intricacies of the mobile world: such things as antenna design, radio frequency radiation, and modeling device behavior on the network. In order to make sure that the tiny iPod antenna does its job efficiently, Apple has spent millions of dollars on the acquisition and collection of special robotic laboratories. In order to make sure that the radiation from the iPhone doesn’t hurt users, Apple created models of human heads — reasonably accurate, with a viscous mass to simulate brain density — and measured the results. To predict iPhone performance on the network, Apple engineers purchased about a dozen radio frequency simulators worth a million dollars each. Even Apple’s experience in creating iPod screens did not help the company in creating iPhone screens that Jobs understood as he carried a prototype in his pocket: to reduce scratching, the touchscreen should be made of glass rather than hard plastic, as was the case with iPod. One of the insiders estimated Apple’s expenses on creating an iPhone at about $ 150 million.
Passing through all this, Jobs maintained the highest level of secrecy. Inside the company, the project was known as P2, briefly from Purple2 (the first iPod phone thrown into the dustbin of history was called Purple 1). The teams were divided and distributed throughout the campus in Cupertino, California. During the visits of Apple's directors to Cingular, they were registered as employees of Infineon, the company that manufactures phone transmitters for Apple. Even the software and hardware development teams of the iPhone were divided: the engineers who created the hardware worked with circuits containing fake software, while the programmers worked on the software stuffing of integrated circuits placed in wooden boxes. By January 2007, when Jobs announced the appearance of the iPhone on Macworld, only about 30 main people of the project saw the device.
The laudatory songs of the iPhone were so sweet that it was easy not to notice its flaws. The original price of $ 599 was too high (and then dropped to $ 399). The phone was tied to the poor AT & T EDGE network. Users could not use the search in the letters or record a video. The browser did not launch flash or java.
But all this did not matter. The iPhone broke the wireless structure with the operators in the center and opened up a bunch of benefits for consumers, developers, manufacturers - and, in the long run, the operators themselves. Consumers got an easy-to-use handheld computer. With the participation of older PC brothers, the iPhone is claiming a development that will make it an even more powerful tool. In February, Jobs will announce the release of a package for developers, so that everyone can write programs for the device.
Producers, meanwhile, are enjoying the new power of trade deals, independent of the operators with whom they have been dealing for decades. Operators who are watching the increase in the share of AT & T users flounder in search of a competing device and seem to admit defeat. Manufacturers get more control levers through the products they produce, users get great opportunities using new devices.
Application developers are set to provide more functionality as telecom operators destroy their strategies for setting traps for users. T-Mobile and Sprint are now partners in Google’s Android alliance, with an operating system in which the ease of creating mobile applications by independent developers is absolute. Verizon, one of the most inflexible operators, announced in November that it would open its networks for use with any compatible device. AT & T made a similar announcement later. In the end, this whole process will lead to a completely new wireless interaction, in which applications run on any device on any network. Over time, this will give the wireless world the same flexibility and functionality that the Internet today possesses.
It may turn out that the nightmares of telecom operators will come true and the iPhone will give power to consumers, developers and manufacturers, turning the wireless networks into “wordless channels”. But by encouraging more innovations, network operators, by contrast, may become even more valuable. Consumers will spend more time on devices, and therefore on networks, thereby increasing the volume of payments and producing more profit for everyone. According to information from Paul Roth, president of AT & T Marketing, telecom operators are exploring new products and services — such as mobile banking — in order to get even more profit from the features of the iPhone. “We approach the market from different angles,” says Roth. In other words, that development leap, which telecom operators have been afraid of for so long, may be just what they need. Steve Jobs opened their eyes to this.
This text is the second part of the translation of the article “The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry” by Fred Vogelstein, published January 9, 2008 in Wired.
www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone?currentPage=all
When reprinting the translation, please refer to the original and the present text.
Authors of the translation will be grateful for comments, comments, corrections of possible inaccuracies and participation in the correction of the translation of the article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/31372/
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