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“One of the most astonishing things about the new Apple iPhone, introduced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the annual Macworld trade show, is how Apple managed to keep it a secret for nearly two-and-a-half years of development while working with partners like Cingular, Yahoo and Google” [source].
Apart from the regular corporate strategies of keeping a secret, Apple relied on their top executives to keep it from even their family especially during the holiday season. Boy, that must have been tough.
Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing and one of the few Apple
executives involved with the project from the start, said he had to
keep the iPhone development secret even from his wife and children.
When he left home for the official unveiling yesterday, Schiller said,
his son asked, “Dad, can you finally tell us now what you’ve been
working on?”
Well, that must need some company loyalty but I guess Apple commands it.
Update: Apparently, Apple didn’t pay much attention to the trademark-infringing name of its product. It was common knowledge much before the phone launched that the brand -iPhone belonged to Cisco. Now, Cisco has sued Apple over trademark infringement and has even elaborated on the reasons behind its action. It does seem that Apple acted out of bad faith and sneaked behind Cisco’s back to launch the product even when their name-sharing negotiations were complete.
This smacks of high-handedness and a disregard for openness. The shine of iPhone is already waning considering that you can own it only if you sign a two-year contract with Cingular. I am waiting for my previous two-year contract to expire and will be switching providers because Cingular sucks and has a high incidence of dropped calls and unreliable although widespread network.
Technorati Tags: iPhone, Apple, secret, business, corporate
by Patrix | on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 7:06 pm | 
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January 11th, 2007 at 6:03 am reply
Perhaps in addition to loyalty, there is also the lure of $tock options and such. Sabe bada rupaiyah ;-)
January 11th, 2007 at 10:14 am reply
Bongo, definitely! But perhaps the probability of success is higher in Apple’s case.