Cisco iPhone outcome with Apple: was Google a factor

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 22 February 2007 16:06

Your IT - Mobility

With Google being one of Cisco’s biggest customers, and Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt on Apple’s Board of Directors, could a potential Google backlash been on John Chambers’ mind when agreeing to end the iPhone lawsuit?

Cisco, Google and Apple are three of the world’s powerful IT players, and a perfect example of the ‘six degrees of separation’ that connects us all to virtually anyone else on the planet.

When Cisco took on Apple over the iPhone name, first by launching Linksys iPhone branded products towards the end of 2006 before the highest speculation of all time that Steve Jobs would launch an iPhone at Macworld 2007, and then by suing Apple the day after the iPhone announcement, Cisco knew that a fight with Apple could easily end up very messy and expensive, with Apple likely to come up smelling of roses anyway no matter what any legal outcome might have been.

That said, Cisco have managed to stake a relatively firm claim on the iPhone name, letting Cisco bask in some of Apple’s iPhone limelight, with the hope that there will be some kind of future interoperability with Apple products that could make Cisco and Linksys products more attractive to consumers and generate more sales than without any Apple or iPhone connection.

In this way, while this outcome was expected, both Apple and Cisco have been able to save face, with Apple able to claim the true victory yet giving Cisco access to what is one of the hottest brand names in the world today, even if Linksys iPhone sales are likely to be tiny in comparison with Apple iPhone sales.

Leaving Google out for a moment, the deal implies that Apple and Cisco will work together on something or in some way in the future, which in the rapidly changing digital media, computing and entertainment landscape could be a useful bit of insurance to have, although it does ultimately depend on Apple and Steve Jobs wanting to play ball.

So now we bring Google back in where we started. With Google and Apple very good friends, with Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt on Apple’s Board, how might Google have reacted to an intransigent Cisco willing to go to court with Apple over the iPhone name, no matter what?

From Cisco’s point of view, it’s all a bit too scary to think about. Cisco got to put out the ‘nobody messes with us or we sue’ message out there lest anyone else think they can similarly outsmart Cisco.

While Cisco have ‘lost’ to Apple, Cisco’s new ‘iPhone’ range has had the best free publicity in the global press ever, with the hope that anyone looking for a wireless VoIP phone that works with Skype and other VoIP providers – with that market growing quite nicely - might have had so much Cisco iPhone exposure that the Cisco/Linksys iPhone range proves to be a success all of their very own!

That, and keeping Google, one of your biggest customers on side, just may have made pressing the whole iPhone issue one of the smartest moves Cisco have made in a while.