Jobs gets his way again: Cisco Apple iPhone spat resolved

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 22 February 2007 12:13

Your IT - Mobility

As expected, Steve Jobs has worked his magic yet again, getting Cisco to drop their lawsuit over the use of the iPhone name, with both sharing the brand, while vaguely agreeing to ‘explore opportunities for interoperability’.

Announced at Cisco’s website is the news that Cisco and Apple have finally reached an agreement of the use of the name iPhone. They’ll both share the brand, offering products branded as iPhones, and will work together on some kind of interoperability in the areas of security, and both consumer and enterprise communications.

It seems sense prevailed at Cisco, with a messy legal war in neither party’s interest. Apple was effectively saying ‘bring it on’, and even if legal battles continued, Cisco would have had to fight against the stark reality that the term iPhone has been used to describe any upcoming Apple phone for years, leading to much more consumer recognition of the Apple iPhone no matter where legal misadventures would have landed.

As the rest of terms of the agreement are confidential, we can only speculate on what kind of co-operation will come down the track, there a few ways Apple and Cisco could work together, beyond Cisco hoping that some of Apple’s magic dust might fall Cisco’s way.

One possibility could easily involve some kind of integration with Cisco’s existing software and hardware VoIP platform, receiving calls on Apple’s iPhone – despite the Linksys iPhone that Cisco would no doubt prefer its customers buy.

Apple and Cisco could work together on IPTV, with Cisco having strong interests in the area, having purchased a set-top box maker and the intelligent KiSS digital media recorder, as well as having invaluable networking insights that could be helpful to Apple as its digital media business starts expanding exponentially.

No-one but Apple and Cisco really know how serious their statement actually is – it seems inevitable that any co-operation will be as large or as small as Apple desires. The only thing we do know for sure is that we can bow our hats to Steve Jobs once again as the 'reality distortion effect' ensures Jobs gets his way!