Apple As A Telco

[GWestphal]

What if Apple used that 100 billion in the bank to start a telco division that was optimized for iDevices. Fiber all over the country, 802.11ac hotspots in stadiums, malls, and other public locations, there own towers. Supporting features like wideband audio etc etc. Maybe unlimited data on iDevices. Also support for bring your own devices android or otherwise based on gsm/CDMA/lte capability.

Discuss.

 

[Centauri]

They should just buy T-Mobile and clean house. It'd be a lot less expensive than developing their own infrastructure and support from scratch. Plus they'd inherit a decent customer base.

 

[brycejones]

Apple doesn't want to get into the infrastructure game. As a company Apple is extremely disciplined about maintaining high margins which is how they managed to run up that $100B in the bank. The kind of telco operation described in the OP is a very capital intensive moderate return at best kind of business. In other words the kind of business Apple tends to stay away from.

 

[joshhedge]

Apple had around $15M in 2007, if they thought it was a viable option they would have done it by now.

 

[Kaido]

Apple doesn't want to get into the infrastructure game. As a company Apple is extremely disciplined about maintaining high margins which is how they managed to run up that $100B in the bank. The kind of telco operation described in the OP is a very capital intensive moderate return at best kind of business. In other words the kind of business Apple tends to stay away from.

Yup. High margins, low hassles. Buy a device & let someone else handle the customer for service plans.

 

[Joe1987]

No need, they got their phones on everyone's network on their terms, that was/is quite a feat.

 

[eriqesque]

Apple had around $15M in 2007, if they thought it was a viable option they would have done it by now.

15 Million is a far cry 100 Billion