Gadgetory

alright so here we are at ctia 2011 we have the privilege of sitting with mr. Glenn lurie who is president of emerging devices very long title retail partnerships for AT&T mobility and consumer market is pretty good that's a long business card it is all in this mistake to my eye shadow me I gotta look I think I tree got one good one so they sent this your bio beforehand with a lot of questions lined up don't you want to ask you the first question I want to ask you is of your professional soccer days oh great so MLS no actually I'm older than I so when i when i graduated in college I was doing the last it was the MIS oh ok you got rocked early and if you were an American back in those days your only chance again hey go to an x flash games ok and I'm just watching you see you're young so I actually played the cheese on play mr. portlyn pride yeah I actually put here for the Portland drive I was my last year plan we can ask the story how'd you get from soccer to be President our learning devices that ain't a stage along stores i've been in the wireless business will be 22 years coming up and iowa's playing ball and in the offseason i thought that i actually had a company that did some work for the head of wireless huh this is back in the days of the old moral 8,000 which were 2,000 bucks you know the big rig fault is that north yeah and i got tell you yeah i just thought it was the coolest thing I've ever seen I felt that same passion I forgot my first cell phone I remember when I had to tell my wife I was leaving a job when a downturn economy to make videos for a living yeah I mean that was that was probably good for you when I hindsight it where it ended up working out well but having to tell my mother that I'm eating my job in a down economy videos this time so i can relate to them sheriff we behind the scenes what was 18 he's thinking you bringing the iphone initially well look there's there's things we said publicly show you know we had done a couple things for that but we launched the rocker I remember the Rhode Island right with Motorola I students built Danny exactly the first time that the iTunes client was ever allowed outside of an Apple device and in that process Ralph and Steve developed a relationship and when Apple decided that that the rocker was a failure this ain't about 2500 this is this actually the rocker launched I want to stay in the end of 04 that the first call where Steve wanted to sit down and really have a conversation about what are we going to do in the future was actually in first quarter of 0 5 and so Stan Ralph and I went and met with mr. jobs and gentlemen Eddy Cue Eddy Cue runs itunes he's certain it works for tim cook today and that was the first meeting of us talking about what do we want to do together they learned from us and we learned a lot from them I mean they weren't in the wild space this is their first jump into the wireless business and their successes of a surprise and I'm just glad that we as partners have had that kind of success that we type ank we expect that same sort of success to continue throughout the absolutely yummy the 4s launch last Tuesday have 200,000 units yeah biggest iphone launch you have to kind of regret it so yeah as far as presale right and you look at what happened I mean same thing happened we went from 3g to 3gs would remember that right everybody said wallah wait a second it's not that big a difference in hatton 3gs arguably one of the most successful phones ever this iteration from 44 s work site and we even though some of the media and some of the analysts kind of times most certainly guilty of at that point tonight wasn't what we expected look at what we care about is what our customers chapel has a done a incredible job with their ecosystem and I am say that I mean from device to content app store to all the ways that that the devices work together you think about the iphone ipad and whatever else you may have when you got a macbook or whatever you have everything you buy on content works with everything and that ecosystem is very hard to replicate and beat and I think that's what it's driven that the customers just love the app store they love itunes they love all the content in yet i love the bookstore and they've just done such a phenomenal job maybe a really simple to utilize and get that content but that's what's kept them about the other follow-up questions that we had and will move off from Apple I brought us all of your other 4G HSPA+ devices in the signorina handle you guys are saying h+ are forging we expect something similar with the aiming for yeah we have making announcements on that yet we're working with apple and that's really all I can say about that right now she's riding you guys feel about the the new media so leaks are part of business please come out but what's what's the we be really likely to the gray no hey look you know it makes you change the way you do business right because reality is is it wasn't you know 10 years ago people weren't looking to be cool by taking something out of a shop and putting it on the web and now say it's against our policies now we have to change what we do business we've had to do things differently a great example I'll go back to Apple you know we first started to look at that but one of the things we have to prove to them is that we keep things quiet we're big AT&T by time we're a big singular right there this they're very very very good if not the best up keeping things your hand quiet and so I we've never lived that in almost seven years it is amazing though how fast things spread and I would say this an all on camera it's amazing how much of its wrong I mean reality I done my PR folks here that deal with me every day well most of it's wrong and that's that's part of the frustration and you know what's wrong and just have to deal with it move on you should you should see our iphone 5 rumor I bet you if I got a buck for every time you had a bad rumor I probably with me ina biga oh but what point being is that's part of the new world man and we have to embrace it being in the line of work we ran into the department you head up where do you see connectivity going obviously tablets are a new market that didn't necessarily exists four or five years they actually cut try a year and half ago yeah absolutely you know most of us don't want to run around carrying around our pcs anymore so we have a tablet I'd argue three years from now you won't have a pc you'll have a tablet that maybe a pc or maybe an iOS or whatever it is but you're not going to add both today you might have it you know there's 260 million cars in the road five percent of them which I mean embedded module yeah but you're you of them are people are expecting it will take this walk in and through connecting that they're going to tether the future down the wheels everyone will be both are you seeing it as KITT from Knight Rider I know it sounds a little outlandish but I mean the whole getting in your car having your phone and juggling a hundred things is that's a big if there's an old simpsons episode yeah the fax machine in the car and drives off the wrist I actually see a mess I actually see it as as as how the customers going to walk this is going to hit the car the car is going to recognize it's there and you're going to have already told it what you want this to you yeah this may be driving the front seat the back see remember the back seats a different place you guys are coming in I got kids so what they wanted the back seat when they were younger there over now is much different than what I cared about in the front seats right the safety security part of the Diagnostics part of it the front seat is really more a business related issue right if you're forward and you've got this new electric ed car and York's and you want to know how its performing that diagnostic you're going to take information too right so now you can see what's the service interval is what's happening etc etc so there's a whole bunch of models that fall into the vehicle but there's no question every car will be connected down the road innovation in almost any industry equals wireless chick tell me any electronic device that would be better if it's connected and then you start to think about that wall you're gonna talk about connected TV try obviously your internet teenies great right they connected home you know what what's the future of the home and we believe the future the home is that's going to be the center of the help of your life I appreciate the time thank you very much so it's very interesting you