Without question, THE most important thing any company can do is to ensure that they don’t muddy the waters with pre-announcements of items shipping AFTER the holidays and goof up the Christmas selling season. They call the day after Thanksgiving "Black Friday" since retailers become profitable (i.e., "in the black") at that time and many make 60% of their yearly revenue in this critical time.
So imagine what a huge faux pas it was for AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson to reveal that a faster 3G iPhone is coming in early 2008. Will people delay an iPhone purchase until next year? If my wife is any indication, yes (she asked me at lunch today to not get her one this Christmas until "they’re faster next year").
Just a guess based on that Bloomberg article referenced above, but this comment by Stephenson was certainly intentional to keep people from going back to Verizon or not coming over to AT&T at all (though the latter logic wouldn’t work IMHO), "AT&T, owner of the largest U.S. mobile-phone service, is using the iPhone to lure customers from its closest rival, Verizon Wireless, which announced a plan this week to open its network to any phone or software maker that meets technical specifications.
Stephenson called the Verizon Wireless plan “overblown.” “The industry’s headed that way,” he said. `We are probably one of the most open networks in the world, not just the U.S.”
The iPhone is great but the AT&T network is becoming increasingly painful to use. I’ve been breaking my own rules and logging on to ANY wireless network that pops up since it takes too long to load pages with AT&T’s EDGE network. Of course, by the time a 3G iPhone ships next year I’ll be ready to buy one since I too want to go faster.
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