Apple's Demands of Vodafone

Well we've all heard that one before...

Somebody at Vodafone crunched the hard numbers and found something was fishy - long term it could be a bad decision though.

Vodafone is going to be losing big time. I expect them to get fried because of this.

Is this place going to become iphonerumors.com or telecomrumors.com? It seems like Macs are becoming a forgotten item around here.

I'm curious about this content restriction though - I can't recall seeing it mentioned in relation to the AT&T deal.

Somebody at Vodafone crunched the hard numbers and found something was fishy - long term it could be a bad decision though.

My 'contact at vodafone' told me today that it's still not decided and the O2 story is a Carphone Warehouse spoiler.

He said she said all over again. blah blah blah... next :D

Apple comes to them with an offer. If it doesn't make business sense, then it's not worth it. Obviously AT&T was hurting for customers and was willing to "pay" for them upfront.

I hate when vendors demand that I change my business rules to accommodate them, especially when the "them" isn't even a proven player in the market.

Verizon is already a major cell phone player and to adjust your entire business model for one company just isn't really smart. It costs a lot of extra dough to make that happen. If you think about it, Apple has basically bypassed AT&T completely on this deal. If tomorrow Apple wasn't happy with AT&T, they could change the activation process to another provider in a snap.

That's why it makes the cellphone companies nervous.

Apple is understood to be demanding that its European mobile phone partners hand over a significant proportion of revenues generated by the iPhone and restrict the content that users can access.

Restrict content? What content? In the US, is any content restricted?

Perhaps it means Vodafone's Vodafone Live! service, which is only accessible via the Vodafone network, and in my experience charges you a very high premium for very poor quality content. I can see why Apple would want to restrict that, and I could see why Vodafone would go off to sulk in a corner.

It's Vodafone's loss.

SL

I'm curious about this content restriction though - I can't recall seeing it mentioned in relation to the AT&T deal.

Probably European only. We always get screwed over compared to our American and Japanese cousins.