CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XXVII - Telstra tells Apple to "stick to your knitting"
We're not really sure what Telstra has to gain by dissing the iPhone, given the fact that it happens to be the only carrier in Australia to support EDGE, making them a natural fit for carrying the device, but diss it they did, with operations chief Greg Winn letting Apple know just how out-of-place he thinks the company is in the phone world: "There's an old saying - stick to your knitting - and Apple is not a mobile phone manufacturer, that's not their knitting." We wonder if anyone tried that line the last time Apple pulled something like this, with that little "iPod" thing of theirs a few years back. He continued, "You can pretty much be assured that Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE and others will be coming out with devices that have similar functionality." Oddly enough, other than that rather derogatory comment at the outset, Winn had some pretty legitimate criticisms of the phone. "I think people overreacted to it - there was not a lot of tremendously new stuff if you think about it," he said. The touchscreen doesn't really excite the guy, since it was "only a matter of time before it went to the device." This is evidenced by the flood of touchscreen phones we've been seeing this month and last. He also raises an eyebrow at the non-replaceable battery, and that while he's "absolutely sure that device will be successful initially," he's in doubt of "how much money are they willing to devote to all of the life cycle management and upgrades." He also seems put-off by the Cingular exclusivity: "They did an exclusive with Cingular and they talked about a global rollout - well, Cingular is not a global company." Maybe Winn just didn't get the memo that there's a world rollout on the way for next year, and he was on the list. "Was" being the key word here.
[Thanks, John K]
