Apple getting its own network?

With Apple’s Sprint deal, did the maker just become the carrier?”
[Via MacSurfer's Apple]

There’s all sorts of news floating around today about Sprint agreeing to purchase a massive cache of iPhones over the next few years. It’s great news for Sprint, which has been having trouble keeping up in the iPhone-heavy world of AT&T and Verizon, and it could be great news for Apple, too. You see, if 2 and 2 really are adding up to make 4, Apple just bought itself a carrier, but not necessarily in the fashion you might think.

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This is interesting. Apple could do a deal where it finds out just how to sell its own phones on a carrier, eventually buying that carrier.

One thing I have discussed is how Apple is held back because the carriers get in the way, with their own business models. Providing streaming video to phones is hampered by the data rates of the woreless carriers, rates that are much higher than they need to be.

These rates hamper Apple’s online strategy.

Perhaps now Apple has a path around that.

Of course, this requires some real thought. Apple makes a lot of money by having multiple carriers sell the iPhone, especially around the world. Could it pull this sort of thing off worldwide? Would it need to?

How many phones would it sell by having a captive carrier with unlimited data, if that data mainly came from Apple servers?

But would it really want to run its own carrier? I’m not so sure but it is fun to speculate.

Microsoft is now third

IBM rises again as its stock passes a declining Microsoft
[Via Ars Technica]

Hot on the heels of Apple passing Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable business in the world, there’s another shakeup at a slightly lower level. IBM is the second-largest tech company by market cap last week, behind Apple and just a hair ahead of Microsoft. It’s the first time in 15 years that Big Blue looks larger than Redmond.

Around the turn of the millennium, Microsoft’s market cap was three times the size of IBM’s, topping out at $600 billion during the peak of Microsoft’s powers. That was also the pinnacle of the dot-com bubble. As you might imagine, things have changed since then.

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At one time, I thought that IBM was a dinosaur and Microsoft was going to rule.

Yet IBM has been able to adjust and is not back leading Microsoft. I wonder if it will pass Apple sometime.

Listening to Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey at OWS

I’m sure Mary is there in spirit. I got to watch this live.

They are in the crowd teaching them a whole slew of ‘call and response’ songs. Some Negro spirituals and union songs. Giving them history and making up lyrics in the spot.

Now Peter is singing Puff. And so is the whole crowd. Changing the lyrics so that Puff lived in a  land called Liberty Park. He keeps stopping to work the crowd and alter lyrics. Fascinating.