Report: Cingular In Cahoots With Apple, Jobs; iPhone Imminent
If Steve Jobs doesn’t announce iPhone tomorrow, the Wall Street Journal will be hung out to dry.
The Journal is all but predicting that Jobs, Apple’s CEO, will unveil Apple’s new combination iPod/phone and an outline of the service plan during his address to the MacWorld conference in San Francisco Tuesday. “As early as tomorrow” is how the Journal report couches it. The report cites “unnamed people familiar with the situation”.
Who would the “unnnamed people” be? Could be anyone from Jobs himself, all the way down to his cleaning lady.
The Journal also reports that Cingular will be the service provider, but it doesn’t offer further details on the potential relationship. (The fact that Cingular partnered with Apple on the introduction of the MOTO ROKR handset back in 2005 has fueled rumors that the two would get together on the iPhone venture.)
Is Apple just going to make iPhones and let Cingular handle the marketing and the customer service like any other handset? Or does Jobs intend to resell Cingular’s service under Apple’s name and reinvent the wireless phone and the service?
Wireless executives (some of whom are in Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show) may get a little less sleep than usual tonight.
Apple, Steve Jobs, iPhone, Cingular, Motorola, ROKR, Consumer Electronics Show, MacWorld
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