Apple, AT&T: Bosom buddies or odd couple?news analysis AT&T is straddling a precarious line between partnering and competing with Apple in the mobile music market.
"With the iPhone, Apple decides what products and services to load on the device. It's a completely different business model."
The wireless company, which until the merger of AT&T and BellSouth was known as Cingular Wireless, introduced its first music-capable phone, the Nokia 3300, in July 2003. Two years later, it introduced the Motorola ROKR, the first iTunes-enabled cell phone. But the phone (which was panned by critics for its 100-song capacity and was upstaged by the simultaneous unveiling of Apple's iPod nano) is considered a flop.
--Mark Collins, vice president of consumer data services, AT&T AT&T is no stranger to mobile music. Motorola stopped including the iTunes software on new versions of the ROKR. Instead, the company replaced it with a media player built by Motorola that is compatible with Windows Media Player formats. Most big online music stores, such as Napster, handle music in this format. In late 2006, AT&T launched its own branded music service. Competitors Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel had established their own music stores more than a year earlier. But unlike these competitors, AT&T partnered with existing music service providers--Napster, Yahoo and eMusic--to bring together a collection of music that would be branded as the AT&T music store on its mobile phones. Initially, the music service only allowed users to download songs to music-enabled phones via their PCs. But this summer, the company announced a deal with eMusic to make its 2.7 million song library available for purchase and download over AT&T's 3G wireless network. Apple by far outpaces sales of all three major cell phone operators who sell music to mobile subscribers. In fact, all three carriers--AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless--sold as much music for all of 2006 as Apple sells on average in three or four weeks, according to Yankee Group's Goodman. Around the same time as the eMusic deal, AT&T launched its partnership with Apple, the leader in the portable music market with its popular iTunes music store and iPod music-playing devices. Under the contract, AT&T is the only carrier in the United States to provide cell phone service to the iPhone. But unlike other phones sold by AT&T, the iPhone is largely controlled by Apple. And while it supports Apple's own iTunes software, it does not work with AT&T's own music store. A "unique" relationship This fact alone sets up some competitive tension between the two companies, each of which is hoping to generate as much revenue as possible from its own service. But even though AT&T gets no revenue from iTunes sales to iPhones, the company says it doesn't view Apple's music store as competition. "One of the things we've demonstrated is that we can offer multiple sets of choices to our customers," said Mark Collins, vice president of consumer data services for AT&T's wireless unit. "AT&T is a market leader in wireless and Apple is the market leader in online and portable music. So it was a natural fit for AT&T and Apple to make a product available to our customers." Still, Collins admitted that the relationship with Apple is "unique." "With other handsets, we decide the applications that are used and how to define the service offering," he said. "But with the iPhone, Apple decides what products and services to load on the device. It's a completely different business model." The competitive waters have been muddied even further with a couple of recent Apple product announcements. First, Apple announced that it had Wi-Fi-enabled its iTunes software, which to some looks like an assault on AT&T's new over-the-air music downloading service from eMusic. Just like with eMusic, iPhone users will be able to purchase and download music wirelessly directly to their phones. Apple did not make this functionality available via AT&T's cellular network even though the iPhone is Wi-Fi-enabled, but instead struck a deal with Starbucks and its Wi-Fi hotspot provider T-Mobile USA that allows any Wi-Fi-enabled device running iTunes to automatically recognize the wireless music store without a connection fee. Collins wouldn't comment on whether iTunes music downloads would eventually be available via AT&T's cellular network, but he did point out that AT&T itself waited until it had a sufficient 3G network footprint before it offered the service via eMusic. Currently, the iPhone operates over AT&T's 2.5G EDGE network. Collins said the music-downloading experience is markedly better over a faster 3G network. This story was first published on CNET News.com. |
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