LIVE FROM MOBILITY LIVE, ATLANTA: Apple’s Eddy Cue, the man known for innovations including iTunes and the App Store, today hailed AT&T’s show of belief ten years ago, when the tech giant first brought the concept of the iPhone to the operator (watch highlights of the event here).

Cue, whose presence at Mobility Live in Atlanta represented a rare public appearance for an Apple representative, and AT&T’s Mobility CEO Glenn Lurie, took to the stage this morning to discuss the origins of their relationship, which saw AT&T launch the iPhone exclusively on its network back in 2007.

In a lively discussion between the two, Apple’s SVP internet and software said dealing with AT&T at the time was “like dating a girl, if we looked too anxious to get the deal done, it wouldn’t work”, after Lurie quizzed Cue on why Apple disappeared for months after their initial discussions.

Both executives revealed the negotiations, which also included the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs and present CEO Tim Cook, along with other AT&T management, started in 2005, although they didn’t sign the deal until 2007, when the two executives in question finally met in Atlanta with their attorneys to get the deal done.

Lurie confessed one of the biggest challenges in dealing with what he described as “the most secretive company in the world” was not actually seeing the iPhone until they’d signed the deal, and only then was he allowed to use the device for the first time.

“You have to find someone special to believe in you,” said Cue. “Why didn’t we show them the device? Because we knew we were building something special. It was a game changer, and we had to keep it secret. We had to develop a close level of relationship with AT&T and there was a level of trust. This shows because we knew network traffic was going to go through the roof with this thing, and we needed an operator to commit billions on their infrastructure, all based on something they hadn’t even seen.”

“At the time, they were huge and we weren’t. We were relying on them.”

The iPhone “blew us away”
Lurie confessed that after finally convincing Cue to let AT&T get access to the device before launch, they were “blown away”.

“There were other touch phones on the market at the time, but this was something different,” he said.

But it was when Apple came to AT&T with the concept of the App Store in the second iteration, the iPhone 3G, that Lurie knew the industry was on the brink of something remarkable, and it made AT&T “nervous” about what could happen if it took off.

“Steve (Jobs), Eddy (Cue), and Tim (Cook) came to us and said we want to build an app store – we had no idea what this was. They were talking about a bunch of developers being able to produce these apps, which meant an open browser and an open user interface. This was the first time the prospect of wireless actually made us nervous at AT&T,” he reflected.

“We left the meeting and thought, if he’s right, it’s going to change everything, and we progressively got even more scared.”

Cue, who revealed he was close to leaving the company twice before Jobs returned in 1997, said even Apple couldn’t have envisioned some of the things that have been brought to the App Store over the years, highlighting social innovations like Snapchat and Twitter in particular.

“When we first developed the App Store, we thought of like 15 applications, and our goal at the time was to develop 100 of them,” he said. “But at the time, even we did not envision the stuff that’s on there now, and that’s what happens when you put technology in the hands of a number of different people.”

TV is next
With the new Apple TV platform set to become available in its retail stores from tomorrow (29 October), Cue said Apple wants to now “revolutionise TV in the same way that we revolutionised the phone”.

“It’s time for TV to become more interactive,” he said. “It’s been stuck for too long, and we want to develop innovation to allow people like AT&T who are in the content business to leverage their DirecTV acquisition and find more ways to innovate.”

When quizzed by Lurie on what Apple plans to do in the next three to five years, Cue said Apple has always “done thing slightly differently”, meaning it didn’t necessarily work in time frames.

“If you are trying to revolutionise, we don’t think of it as a step process. Look at what we did for Apple Pay. We looked at the problems surrounding something that had so much hype around it and made it better. We love looking at the problems, and then building the tools to improve them.”