Apple's iPhone to launch as Cingular-exclusive?
By Paul Miller 
posted Sep 26th 2006 10:13AM
posted Sep 26th 2006 10:13AM
According to some juicy and totally unverifiable rumoring by Think Secret, Apple is prepping their "still totally unconfirmed but fairly likely to happen" iPhone as a Cingular exclusive for when it launches next January. The exclusivity, which will expire mid-2007, doesn't seem incredibly far-fetched given the ROKR exclusive Cingular scored last year -- not that it worked out too terribly well for them. Apple is also purportedly in talks with other carriers across the world, but no word if O2 is going to score the Europe exclusive again. Think Secret is also sticking with their story in regards to specs: a 2.2-inch display and three megapixel camera, and we figure we might as well throw HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) into the mix given the predicted Cingular launch. The word from "insiders" is that Apple is estimating shipments of 25 million or more iPhones in 2007 alone, which seems quite optimistic given the fact that Moto's RAZR took two whole years to hit the 50 million mark, but when it comes to Apple and potentially fabricated launch deets and market predictions, we suppose the sky's the limit.
Hmmm... I'd sure be interested to find out who (if any) will be carrying this phone in Australia when (if at all) it sees the light of day...
Well, considering I don't talk on the phone, or ever leave the house, I suppose I should be quite thrilled with this.
Get on with the gettin' on.
is the phone just going to be GSM or has anyone heard about a CDMA version.
If it's Cingular it's GSM because they don't do CDMA.
Does anyone know if this will have a mac os? for sync reasons? Let get a mobile mac os out there folks...
This just in from Steve J... The iPhone to include widgets! Thanks for the inside scoop Steve!
Please please let this be Cingular exclusive. Always fun to have a phone not everyone else can have.
Right, because your value as a human is proportional only to your exclusivity.
Too bad cingular gets it. Thats the only thing cingular has-phones. there service is horrible. I have verizon now and verizon has phones AND service. if VZW got this phone it would be a major success-cool phone + great service + vcast = ausome
It would be an improvement because currently all of Cingular's phones suck in the worst of ways.
Didn't Steve say they weren't making an iPhone a couple of months ago?
And going from not making any phones to selling 25million a year is a bit much for even Apple.
I'm still on record as saying there is no iPhone.
I mean ThinkSecret has been reporting this stuff for *years* now. And the release is always just a couple of months away, but there are always various "sticking points" that end up keeping it from release. I think it's all a big joke being played on TS by someone.
TS's track record on predictions is also well below 50% - their sources are not nearly as reliable as they seem to think they are.
Come on, Cingular is not that bad.
My sister has Verizon, and the only difference I can distinguish from these two is on the quality of data service, not voice. I had also been a Sprint customer for 15 months, and dear heaven, what the hell was I thinking...
P.S. I do talk on the phone, and leave my house all the time.
I think the iphone will bust. apple is good at doing its thing. its good at selling music online cuz it knows its stuff in the area. its good at making mp3 players. its good at making laptops cuz they experience. it took motorola how many attempts at a phone to get to where it is with the razr? how about samsung, or sanyo who have been making phones for a long time.
cell phones is already a saturated market, where only the BEST survive. i have a feeling that apple cannot make a phone that will survive past the initial hype.
Serge, you so crazy.
Apple wasn't in the MP3 player business at one time. Companies like Rio, Creative, and Archos were in the MP3 player business. But then Apple came along and showed them how to do it right.
If Apple makes a phone, you better bet they'll make an interface that's worth using. Current phone OSes suck the big one. And these companies making the phones today are doing nothing to rectify the situation. Just like the MP3 player market, the cell phone market needs to be shown the way.
And 3 years from now when everyone has caught on that people want electronic devices that are actually useful you Apple-haters can pan the iPhone for not having OGG support and talk about how great your new phone is that looks very similar to the iPhone but has some extra feature and is brown.
Exactly,
The only reason everyone loves the RAZR currently is because of it's size. I had mine for a few months and after realizing how incredibly bad the UI is, I gave it away and got a Treo 650.
Although with the 650 I'm realizing it has it's fair share of problems as well. I get random reboots and lockups ALL the time, and sometimes when I'm receiving calls! If Apple does come out with a phone, they need to make sure their OS is stable enough that no matter what the phone function works. Then they can add whatever nice music/ipod like interface they want to it. Adding in things like a camera could just make it more buggy and I hope they only do it if it's well thought out.
That was the best comment ever.
Personaly, I think Apple is the one company that has all the experience to do a multimedia phone right. I almost got a Blackberry 8100, but I think I'll hold out and see is this pans out in January. Besides, I don't want my phone calls inadvertantly silenced http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/09/17/blackberry-pearl-wont-ring-in-your-pocket/.
Cingular exclusivity is a safe bet in the US. They have lots of customers and I'm sure Steve wants to sell as many as possible.
The only way I see Cingular not getting an exclusive on this is if Apple is unhappy with the way they handled the previous iTunes devices. The ROKR was a flop and the SLVR wasn't as hot as some anticipated. Perhaps Apple sells this as an unlocked device without carrier subsidies? People are already willing to spend $200-$400 on a new iPod every year or two. An iPhone would cost about as much I'd think. This way, all GSM users regardless of carrier can get in on the action.
I don't care what anyone says, I like the use of the word "deets"
There is no way in HELL this thing will be exclusive to any carrier if it ends up being good.
Why? Million of iPod customer are on differnt carriers.
Apple wants this thing to sell.
Also, even if it was cingular exclusive, you could always buy the phone unlocked.
Finally, no matter how cool the iPhone ends up looking, It will look like total ass with a cingular logo stamped on it.
I wonder who'll be carrying it in Canada. Hopefully Rogers, since that's who I'm stuck with right now and they carried the ROKR here if I recall correctly.
This might be Apple's way of apologizing for making such a crap itunes product as their first Cingular device ;)
If Apple is going to do an iPhone, they're going to have a MVNO for it, because Apple is very big on providing an end to end service for their customers.
oh, and CDMA is a better technology.
Is this going to be a simple phone, or the return of the Newton? It's about time Apple got back into that space, though they're obviously taking their time to not let the legacy down.
If not an all out gadget, it might be Apple's own ipod killer, as phone/music devices become more compelling and they could maybe scoop Zune; by mid next year decent phone/music devices will be de rigeur.
Any way you look at it, this is a step in the direction of integration. I just wish rather than coming out with the transitory flavour of the quarter, we could see something like http://wiki.zooid.org/wiki/An_ideal_gadget
I think/hope Apple will just sell the phone on its own website without any carrier exclusives and what not. Just let me buy the damn phone and swap my SIM in. Then I'll figure out which provider to use based on service and extras. Choice to the consumer, baby.
"Carrier Exclusives" and competing technologies is exactly why apple isn't entering the market. (not to mention the nasty contracts and price gouging etc: it's an ugly place.)
*IF* apple ever does the phone thing, my money says it's through a MVNO, or (possibly in conjunction with) VOIP.
Apple just releasing the iPhone to specific (or even a handful of) carriers, makes just about as much sense as apple releasing HDTV sets and and stand-alone DVD players. It's not their market unless they MAKE it their market, and then control it.
anyway, this iPhone rumor has grown old and tiring. i wish engadget would stop harping on it every time they need a little more readership. :
I really really want the iPhone to be real... I want to believe but still it seems a little out there... but I WANT TO BELIEVE
but Apple if you are looking even though you're probably not... please make a black one but NOT glossy black it would get too easily scratched (people generally carry there cell phones with them more often than iPods so they need to be a bit more durable)... the black anodized aluminum of the new nano would be PERFECT or even a rubberized black like the PEBL would be good
I cant wait for the iPhone (it IS coming)
If this is a Cingular exclusive you can count me among those running AWAY from it.
Cingular is by far and away the worst mobile phone operator in the U.S. Theirr customer service is hideous, their call quality is terrible, and they will shut your phone off without warning at the slightest problem with your account.
Lowest dropped calls? How about most "can't hear because of that horrific echo" calls?
Add to their hideous call quality the fact that they shut off my phone with no notice whatsoever because there was a mixup with my mail forwarding when I moved and my first bill was returned, and you can count me among those who will never use Cingular again.
It's not like they didn't have my phone number or anything. You'd think they would give me a call and say "Hey. What's up. Your bill came back to us undeliverable. What's the deal? Oh, you just moved and the forwarding hasn't kick in yet? Oh, ok, let's just change that little address of your and get you on your way." Maybe shutting my phone off without telling me is their way of thinning out their customer base to keep their dropped call stats low.
THEN when I tried to cancel my service a day before my 30 day early termination period was up, they tried to tell me that my phone was activated A FULL TWO DAYS BEFORE I EVEN OWNED IT.
So. An iPhone with Cingular? I would never defile my Apple device in that way. I'll wait til the T-Mobile iPhone hits the market.
Not that there really is an iPhone anyway. :)
I just don't like Cingular. I don't really know though, maybe I would switch over. But, I would rather them goto another company like T-Mobile. But, thats just my opinion.
"where only the BEST survive"
Wow. That word must not mean what I thought it did.
I've yet to see a mobile phone that's not a stinking turd-wipe. As far as I can tell, they don't exist. My treo 650 reeks less than a lot of them, but boy does it have some warts.
It is a saturated market...because the carriers won't allow competition. They are the gatekeepers, and the makers of the suck. The phone mfrs all dance to their really, really lame tune.
So, yeah. If anybody can make a phone that's not crizzap, it'd be Apple. Not holding my breath, though.
Join the Church of the First Coming
We BELIEVE in the Messiah of all Gadgets
We beleive IT will come to save us all fromthe unholy UI
and IT's name shall be ..iPhone
Share thyne Apple, for it will lead you not into temptation
The cell phone world is a completely different animal than all the other consumer electronics and computers that Apple is used to.
Here are Apples options as I see them in no particular order:
1. GSM phone that works in US as well as all over the world and would have the largest possible market.
2. Different radio models for different markets, CDMA version for Spint/Verizon, GSM for Cingular/T-Mobile/Europe and Japanese CDMA freq.
3. MVNO probably on Sprint network would allow Apple to control the entire experience of the consumer, sell talk time plans, insert Apple UI on phone and control warranty issues.
4. iPhone turns out not to be a cell phone but instead a VOIP home phone/iPod that ties into WiFi, syncs with contacts, remote control w/display to control music/video on computer or from the iPod device within.
I like the idea of an iPhone but an integrated device bucks the Apple trend of adding features or products on a peice meal basis.
Cingular has codenamed this phone the "crystal clear"w?t?f?(lame, i know).
Unsure if they are going to stick with that name at launch though.
That is all. Nothing more to see here. Move along.
Being the optimist I am hopeful we will see a new innovative phone that will be "state of the art" and live uo to everyones expectations.
i have an iphine my daddy made i its blue and cool
will this phone b out in cricket or verizon by next summer
You can bet if apple is coming out with a cellphone
they're already working on the third generation 1000 gb worldwide gps in nickel silver that will have it outdated just in time for Christmas 2007!
Im happy with my Razr and my 40 gig iPod!
I'm a current Cingular customer and have no idea why Apple chose Cingular as its exclusivity vendor. Cingular's customer services is horrible. This will create a lot of problems for Apple in the long run.