Apple tipped to become an MVNO, again

Stuart Corner
Friday, 15 December 2006 16:51

Your IT - Mobility

News wires are awash with reports of a suggestion from a UBS analyst that Apple won't stop with the launch of iPhone but will become a mobile virtual network operator. It's hardly an original idea, as iTWire reported back in April.

In a note issued on 13 December UBS telecom analyst, John Hodulik, suggested that Apple would become an MVNO in the US on the Cingular network. "If followed, this strategy would appear to indicate Apple's increasing desire for customer control, and potentially, store traffic," he said. "We believe if volume had been the most important variable, Apple would work with all the major vendors in the US. to support its new iPod phone (iPhone), enabling it to target the heart of the 225 [million] domestic wireless users."

Market research company, Visiongain in a report 'Apple in Wireless: Strategic options in a converged marketplace,' published in April said. "Apple acknowledges the threat mobile handsets pose to portable MP3 players in the long term. As such, it has begun to make a mobile play initially, via the Motorola partnership. However...Apple could embrace mobile more fully and pose a greater threat to the cellphone industry itself as an MVNO challenging carriers and as a cellphone brand challenging handset makers."

While the Visiongain suggestion was purely speculative, UBS claims to have more concrete information. Hodulik says: "While we believe Apple has been able to negotiate an attractive deal with Cingular, we do not know whether it will be attractive enough to allow it to compete for high volume users and still make money on the phone services (if that is its intention at al)."