AfterTek

Never mind the “remastered” iPods, the souped-up PCs and the plans to bring Web video to your television that Apple has shown off in recent months.  Apple enthusiasts and some investors want the company to roll out a mobile phone. And Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who takes as much care managing Apple’s press as he does overseeing its products, isn’t doing anything to discourage them. This summer, he let Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer raise hopes for a phone by telling analysts that the company isn’t “sitting around doing nothing” about the wireless market.

Since then, techies have noticed strings of text lurking in Apple’s iTunes software code that refer to mobile phone compatibility. And the sometimes-right, sometimes-wrong Apple rumor blogs insist that the company has a deal in the works with wireless carrier Cingular that begins in 2007. American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu predicts that Apple could eventually sell 10 million units.

But what exactly will Apple be selling? With no real solid information to go on speculators are having a harder time than usual trying to figure out what route Jobs will take if the company does roll out a new phone.

One near certainty: He won’t repeat the mistakes he made with the Rokr, a failed collaboration between Apple, Cingular and Motorola.  That phone, introduced a year ago, was a ho-hum handset and a lousy iPod. Critics and consumers alike wanted nothing to do with it.

But Jobs will still face many of the same hurdles he encountered a year ago. If he does work with Cingular, he’ll still have to win over a wireless carrier, which traditionally has ultimate control over the hardware and software design process. As a company known for obsessing about design and interface details within its iPods and computers, “Apple won’t want to be dictated to,” says analyst Rob Enderle.

Apple would also have to count on Cingular’s in-store sales reps to explain and push the phone on shoppers, a proposition that would likely irritate Jobs, who has made Apple’s own retail stores a stunning success. One alternative would be to turn Apple into a “Mobile Virtual Network Operator,” where the company would buy time on a major carrier’s network and resell it to consumers with its own branded handsets and service plans.

As an MVNO, Apple would have the freedom to create the iPhone and its accompanying music player and store on its own terms. But it would have to start dealing with the day-to-day headaches of managing a network, and potentially huge startup costs. And the MVNO is far from a proven business model: Just ask the Walt Disney Co.  Which just pulled the plug on its ESPN-branded MVNO after less than a year of operations. Yesterday the company said shutdown costs alone will run $30 million.

Instead of moving forward with either model the standard carrier relationship or the MVNO, Apple may have the power to invent a third option: one where it cuts a deal with a carrier like Cingular to get the hardware freedoms associated with MVNOs and the service infrastructure associated with mainstream carrier tie-ups.