After last week's iPhone announcement, It seems quite clear now who's in control in the Apple-AT&T relationship. Not only Apple perceives a cut off the carrier's iPhone subscribers bill (that's why Apple is accounting the iPhone revenues differently from the iPod touch), but the Cupertino company also gets to choose what applications subscribers can load onto their iPhone. So far, developers had to beg carriers to put their applications on their "deck" before the carriers' subscribers can load them on their phone. The carriers then charge the subscriber for usage and gives a small cut to developers.

But with the iPhone, Apple totally reversed the "deck". AT&T has no say on what applications are available on its network and is simply cut off from that revenue stream. I guess this what Steve Jobs meant about his "new kind of relationship" with the carriers: he gets to do what he wants and make money out of it, the carriers just provide the wireless pipe!

"We have great relationships with our carriers and we struck a new kind of relationship with our carriers where Apple is responsible for the software on the phone.... We're running the developer programme, we're distributing the apps... This is our programme and we're running it", said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Last November, Verizon announced its "Any Apps, Any device" open strategy and will disclose more details on an upcoming conference in New York next week. But it's going to be slow to change mentalities in the carrier world and without someone like Steve Jobs to push real hard an AT&T, I don't think that'll happen anytime soon.