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Cingular's CEO, Stan Sigman, boasts that the deal with Apple was sealed over two years ago, before a product had ever been seen: such was the confidence that Apple would produce a disruptive product which Cingular simply had to be part of. This attitude is not surprising. The iPhone has the potential to be an unsettling force in the mobile industry, in much the same way the iPod impacted the portable music market, so it's better to be with Apple, rather than against it. Nonetheless, operators should be under no illusions of the impact which Apple and the iPhone will have on their business and the speed with which it will consign them to simple connectivity providers.

Let's look at branding. Yesterday, I received an upgrade handset from my operator, Orange. The carrier's square, orange logo sits on the front of the handset casing, and the boot screen is also brightly coloured courtesy of Orange. The homescreen and the entire UI is branded along the same orange theme - there's so much orange it makes me blue.

Appreciating the intimacy between the consumer and their handset, Tier One operators have spent the past few years investing hugely in extending their brand presence onto the device itself, in many cases sitting equal or sometimes dominant to the handset manufacture's brand. This was a battle fought with blood and tears between operators and the major handset OEMs, and the operators won - after all, they are the OEMs' biggest customers, each purchasing tens of millions of devices each year.

Apple on the other hand takes a purest approach to branding, with its distinctive apple logo only appearing on the back of the iPod casing. This understatement exudes an arrogance and sophistication which only a brand like Apple can achieve. While we don't yet know the level of branding which Cingular (which by then will be known as 'AT&T Wireless') will get on the iPhone, I think it is safe to say that the probability of it getting any presence at all, let alone control over UI theming, is fantastically unlikely. (perhaps it might get a second or two of the boot screen).

Another area operators have invested heavily is in their content portals. They've pieced together complex service delivery platforms and billing systems from a variety of vendors, and inked lofty content deals with some big name media giants. They've also experimented with a vast number of programs to achieve a level of interoperability on devices for gaming applications and ringtones.

In many ways, iTunes mirrors the operator content portal - the only difference is that iTunes is easy to use, intuitive, offers rich and genuinely sought-after content and doesn't leave the end user in a near suicidal state at the end of the download experience. It is no secret that Apple's strategy is to drive sales and market share by marrying its devices with a hugely compelling content experience. Margins may come from devices, but content will fundamentally underpin the hardware business in ultimate symbiosis. It does not take a visionary to foresee Apple soon adding ringtones and gaming media to its already wide portfolio of music, movie and TV downloads. The idea of an iPhone owner using Cingular's portal instead of iTunes to manage their mobile content experience is so absurd that even Cingular would have to admit that such an eventually is unlikely.

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