[Infowarrior] - FW: How Apple kept its iPhone secrets

[Richard Forno]

(c/o M.S.)

------ Forwarded Message

How Apple kept its iPhone secrets

Bogus prototypes, bullying the press, stifling pillow talk - all to
keep iPhone under wraps. Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the
year's biggest tech launches.

By Peter H. Lewis, Fortune senior editor
January 10 2007: 7:00 PM EST

SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune) -- One of the most astonishing things about
the new Apple iPhone, introduced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the
annual Macworld trade show, is how Apple (Charts) managed to keep it
a secret for nearly two-and-a-half years of development while working
with partners like Cingular, Yahoo (Charts) and Google (Charts).

The iPhone, which won't be available in the United States until June,
represents a close development partnership with America's largest
wireless phone company (Cingular, now a part of AT&T (Charts), has 58
million subscribers), the world's largest e-mail service (Yahoo has a
quarter-billion subscribers worldwide), and the world's dominant
search company. Although speculation was rampant before the
introduction that Apple would introduce a phone with iPod
capabilities, actual details of the device were scarce. Even some
senior Apple managers whispered during the keynote that they were
seeing the iPhone for the first time, along with the 4,000 other
Apple followers who crammed the Moscone meeting center here. Indeed,
Apple's emphasis on secrecy may have influenced Apple's choice of
Cingular to be the exclusive provider for iPhone service in the
United States.

Apple, legendary for the ferocity with which it safeguards new
product announcements, had extraordinary challenges in keeping the
iPhone under wraps for 30 months. Besides involving Cingular, Google
and Yahoo, not to mention the unnamed Asian manufacturer, the project
touched nearly every department within Apple itself, Jobs said, more
so than in any previous Apple creation.

...

http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/10/commentary/lewis_fortune_iphone.fortune/