Apple ♥ Cisco. Maybe.

When Apple and Cisco decided to co-own the iPhone name, analysts speculated that the deal wasn't as even as it was projected and that Cisco actually lost the negotiations.

Rising above the negativity, Computer World's Jack Gold discusses how both companies can profit from their joint ownership. He uses fixed mobile convergence as a point of reference. Using this emerging technology, he proposes a scenario where Apple and Cisco can have a mutually beneficial existence:

By sharing the iPhone brand, Cisco could leverage its VoIP experience while Apple could leverage its entertainment-oriented cellular phone experience. The two together could be greater than the sum of the parts. Is it such a stretch to envision Apple configuring an iPhone with VoIP in addition to cellular? And is it such a stretch to envision Cisco selling an FMC device that also has entertainment features embedded that it obtains from Apple? The two could be cross-selling each other’s products and sharing their engineering strengths to address the FMC market, not to mention their complementary distribution channels. This would benefit both companies.

The question is, will they really work together? Or will they behave the way most analysts predict them to?

Since you're probably sick of all the iPhone news by now, here's a little something different. Smartphone software retailer Handango released the Handango Yardstick, a global report on the state of the smartphone content industry. It's basically a report about what's in your phone, not just hardware sales numbers. The stats include sales for Windows Mobile, Palm, BlackBerry and Symbian, among other things. Click here to view the full report.

Source: ComputerWorld, Cellular-News

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Apple ♥ Cisco. Maybe.

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