Cingular Made iPhone Deal with Apple in February 2005: NYTimes

A New York Times report this morning cites high-ranking officials with Cingular and Apple as having confirmed they entered into a deal to produce the iPhone as far back as February 2005.

Apple apparently did not shop the phone out to other carriers; instead, the companies had entered into an exclusive relationship early on. That relationship culminated at one point in the iTunes service deal for Motorola's ROKR phones, which may have helped cement relations between the electronics company and the cellular provider, but not between the former and the phone producer.

The Times said the two companies had considered a less extensive relationship where Apple extends more services through Cingular's network, which may have ended up contributing to the feature sets of many brands of phones. But Apple is, at heart, a device company. So Cingular's board of directors signed on as the exclusive carrier behind Apple's iPhone, even though no prototype or drawings or description was provided to the board in advance. It was easier for the board to keep a secret when its members weren't apprised of the details; instead, they kept faith in Apple as a brand.

Last year, Apple filed for a registered trademark for the now-even-more-ridiculous-sounding brand-name "Vingle," which papers described as applying to a communications service based on WiFi standards, the technology behind it, and the store that would sell them. At around the same time, Apple was filing patent papers for a touch-screen device concept that was receptive to different kinds of fingertip input, although the drawings supplied with those applications resembled a much larger device than an iPod or iPhone - more like a medium-sized paperback book.

A vocal minority this morning are disappointed that the iPhone is not that device, claiming it might have been more revolutionary and more in the spirit of Apple. But in retrospect, both the trademark filing and the applications - the latter of which truly do apply to iPhone technology, even if the size is off-scale - may have been part of a very clever smokescreen to help deter attention from the company's deal with Cingular, which began - according to the Times report - at roughly the same time as the filings.