AT&T Cingular Re-Branding

AT&T is changing the Cingular name.....

Top U.S. phone company AT&T said it will step up its rebranding campaign at Cingular Wireless stores, seeking to raise AT&T's profile ahead of the launch of Apple's iPhone.

The company will replace the Cingular name with AT&T in the interiors of its 1,800 shops on Monday, ahead of the iPhone launch in late June.

AT&T acquired BellSouth last year, a move that consolidated its ownership of the two companies' wireless joint venture, Cingular, which is being rebranded as AT&T.

"The iPhone is one of the most anticipated handsets ever in the wireless industry, and we want to make sure that every drop of equity from the iPhone accrues to the AT&T brand," AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said.

"We want to be as far along as possible with our rebranding in advance of the launch of the iPhone."

AT&T, however, said it will keep the exterior signs of most of the stores unchanged for now, showing it would take time to dismantle the well-recognized wireless brand.

The rebranding is expected to take a year or so, although AT&T has not set a deadline. The company has said it will keep an eye on consumer surveys to assess the public's recognition of AT&T as a wireless provider.

"Our branding campaign is performing above projected levels, we are ahead of schedule, and customer response has been very positive," Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson said in a statement.

AT&T said it was launching a new advertising campaign with the tagline: "Your world is wireless. AT&T is wireless."

AT&T will hold on to the iPhone for 5 years....

A report from 'USAToday' says AT&T will have exclusive distribution rights for the iPhone for 5 years in the United States.....

By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY
The Apple iPhone, due out next month, has been breathlessly hailed as offering consumers the ultimate wireless experience.

It also could give AT&T, its exclusive U.S. distributor, the ultimate experience for a wireless carrier: an easy way to handcuff rivals and steal customers.

AT&T has exclusive U.S. distribution rights for five years — an eternity in the go-go cellphone world. And Apple is barred for that time from developing a version of the iPhone for CDMA wireless networks.

That ban is no small thing. AT&T rivals Verizon Wireless and Sprint are both CDMA shops. AT&T uses GSM, a global standard incompatible with CDMA.

Bottom line: If you want an iPhone anytime soon, you'll have to take your business to AT&T.

Stan Sigman, CEO of wireless at AT&T, makes no apologies for his tough approach.

"I'm glad we have (the iPhone) in our bag," he says. "Others will try to match it, but for a period of time, they're going to be playing catch-up."

Hardball is nothing new in the cellphone industry. But as white-hot growth finally begins to slow, it's getting downright desperate out there.

To keep the momentum, big carriers such as AT&T are rapidly expanding their stable of devices, a proven way to draw people into stores. They're also piling on features — media downloading and photo-sharing are hot — and tweaking calling plans.

Their common goal: add new customers and get them to stay put.

"It's guerrilla warfare," says Jane Zweig, CEO of market researcher The Shosteck Group. "They all want to say 'We're No. 1.' "

Roger Entner, a senior vice president at IAG Research, agrees. "They're battling for every customer."

Wall Street is the driver. Carriers are valued, in large part, on how many subscribers they add each month. That was a lot easier a few years ago, when it wasn't uncommon for cellphone companies to add 25% a quarter.

Now that the major carriers are elephantine in size, that's a lot harder to do. AT&T currently claims about 62.2 million customers. Verizon and Sprint have 60.7 million and 53.6 million, respectively.

About 78% of U.S. households have a mobile phone, says Charles Golvin, a wireless industry analyst at Forrester Research, vs. 53% five years ago. Total subscribers: about 210 million.

For the most part, Golvin says, anybody who wants a cellphone has one. Those who don't, he says, "are the very young, the very old and the economically challenged." Those groups are not particularly attractive to the big carriers, which also are valued on how much revenue per subscriber they generate.

Rustling up revenue

That leaves the carriers with one option, basically, for adding customers: steal them.

"Today's market is not about finding new opportunities," Golvin says. "It's about stealing somebody else's customers."

The AT&T and Verizon Wireless rivalry is particularly fierce. AT&T has slightly more customers; Verizon has more revenue. Both claim to be No. 1.

They also sparred over the iPhone. As previously reported by USA TODAY, Verizon passed on the opportunity to become the exclusive U.S. distributor, balking at Apple's demand for control over distribution, pricing, marketing and more. That left an opening for AT&T — then called Cingular — to cement a deal. (AT&T on Monday officially dumped the Cingular name and store signs now are being switched. The move came slightly ahead of schedule.)

Denny Strigl, Verizon's chief operating officer, decided to pass on the iPhone deal and says he has no regrets: "Time will tell" if he made the right call, he says.

Strigl doesn't think the iPhone will be that hard to compete against. Why? Because, he says, for five long years it will be tied to AT&T's wireless network. His point: A phone is only as good as the network it runs on, and he thinks Verizon's is better.

"The issue is not the Apple-ness of the iPhone itself, but with the cellular network that it is running on," Strigl says, picking his words carefully. "That will be the true test of the iPhone: What will the iPhone experience be?"

Given Apple's cultlike following, however, Verizon isn't taking any chances. Strigl says Verizon is already working with a manufacturer — he declines to say which one — on an answer to the iPhone.

"We do have a very good response in the mill," he says. "You'll see that from us in the late summer."

Source

AT&T to target iPhone to enterprise

Source

Door: Nancy Gohring IDG News Service

AT&T Inc. plans to market the iPhone to business users in addition to consumers but analysts aren't recommending that enterprises supply workers with the phones.

Cingular, which was acquired by AT&T, recently decided that the iPhone will appeal to business users and the operator is now working hard to ensure that its backend enterprise billing and support systems will accommodate the device when it ships, said a source familiar with the company's plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

An AT&T spokesman said he couldn't comment on the iPhone beyond when it will become available and its price. The phone is expected to become available in June. It will cost US$499 or $599 depending on the memory size. Initially, AT&T will be the exclusive provider of the iPhone, although other service providers are expected to eventually start selling it as well.

The idea of marketing the iPhone as an enterprise product baffles some analysts.

If AT&T announces that it will be marketing the phone to enterprise customers, "we'd be against it," said Ken Dulaney, an analyst with Gartner, who said he hasn't heard of such a plan from the operator. "We'd immediately tell our customers that'd be a very serious mistake."

No matter what kind of reputation a vendor has, if it's making its first phone, Dulaney would be unlikely to recommend it. "Building a phone is one of the most difficult things to do," he said.

Also, the iPhone is expected to have a number of shortcomings for business users, he said. For example, it doesn't have a removable battery. "You'd be crazy to buy without that," Dulaney said. The phone has multiple processors, which consumes more battery life than single processors, he said.

It also comes with a touch screen and no buttons, making it difficult for users to dial while driving, he noted.

He suspects that enterprises will likely decide against the iPhone for similar reasons that many decide not to standardize on Mac computers. Even if the iPhone is attractive, like the Mac, they'll choose BlackBerry or Windows Mobile devices because those have more software application options, he said.

That's one reason that Avi Greengart, principal analyst for mobile devices at Current Analysis, also thinks the iPhone won't be a good option for enterprise customers. Apple has said that the iPhone will run on an OS X-based operating system and told Greengart that enterprises won't be able to write applications for the phone, he said. "Companies like to extend corporate apps to the mobile space and in order to do that you need an open OS," he said. Mobile operating system developers like Windows, Symbian and BlackBerry enable third parties to write applications based on their software.

Since the iPhone isn't available yet, there's a chance that it could launch with applications that might appeal to business users, such as support for corporate e-mail, but Greengart said he'd be surprised if it did.

Without such corporate applications, enterprises would be buying their employees a device with plenty of storage for their digital music collections. "Could a company deploy this? They could but they'd be paying for storage and for something intended for use as a consumer device," Greengart said.