Who wears the pants in the iPhone AT&T Wireless relationship?

Published: August 1, 2007, 5:50 am

Tags: appl, iphone, ipod, smart phone, smartphone, t, telecom, wireless

Filed under: Products and services, Apple Inc (AAPL), AT and T (T), SmartphonesDownloadsquad reports that AT&T's (NYSE: T) AT&T Wireless has dropped Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone from the main page of its web site. What does this tell us about which company is driving the partnership. It looks like Apple has the better end of this stick: Apple negotiated an unprecedented deal for a percentage of every iPhone customer's monthly contract, The iPhone lacks any integration with AT&T's profitable video, audio and ringtone services -- siphoning those profit opportunities through its iTunes Store or -- in the case of ringtones -- potentially through a future software update. And AT&T Wireless -- which lost much of its marketing power back in 1984 when AT&T was broken up -- was eager for a bit of Apple's star power. Unfortunately, AT&T Wireless has realized that what matters most to Apple is keeping Steve Jobs happy. And Jobs probably sees AT&T

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