Cnet has posted a great story about the Apple, AT&T relationship with some insights on why this corporate relationship is so difficult mostly for AT&T.
AT&T is straddling a precarious line between partnering and competing with Apple in the mobile music market.
AT&T's exclusive deal to sell Apple's iPhone for use on its network in the United States has been the envy of the wireless industry for more than nine months. But managing its own mobile music strategy while working with a tight-lipped and controlling partner like Apple is proving a challenge for AT&T, particularly as Apple launches new products and services that may compete with AT&T's own.
Like many partnerships in the tech industry, the Apple-AT&T combination is increasingly looking like "co-opetition," a term used to describe business partners that also compete. Apple, of course, is no stranger to co-opetition: For years, Microsoft, to name one company Apple works with, has sold software to run on the Macintosh operating system despite its own, more dominant Windows OS. Now AT&T is learning that the blurring of self-interest and cooperation is the price of doing business with a fast-moving outfit like Apple.
"I haven't seen a deal yet where Apple hasn't come out of it smelling like roses and its partners have had to bear the brunt."
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