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The iPhone 5 launch sees Apple having surpassed Exxon-Mobil in stock market capitalization to become the largest company in the United States. This comes at a time when the tech giant's cash position is more than three quarters of the way to a hundred billion dollars, giving it both the kind of stock position to forcibly take over nearly any U.S. company it wants in a leveraged move, along with the kind of gold on-hand which would allow it to simply buy most other companies outright. And yet a cursory look at Apple's operations says that it's not in dire need of any particular acquisition. Its iPad dominates the tablet market without a hitch. Its iTunes Store runs the music industry without having had to acquire any of the record labels along the way. And while the iPhone is facing heavy competition from the Android platform, Android OS developer Google is one of the few companies which Apple couldn't realistically acquire. Yet there is one thing that's been holding the iPhone back from day one, and will continue to plague the iPhone 5 even as it eventually expands to every major carrier in every nation: it's the fact that most carriers just plain suck. Or at least they do in the U.S. And whether Apple wants to admit it or not, when it talks of "keeping the powder dry" by way of explaining why it doesn't use its ever-growing cash position for anything, what it's secretly eying is a way to offer its own in-house cellular network.

Forget about buying an existing carrier as a dedicated iPhone 5 offering, even if it could pull it together in time for the launch. Such a move would force Apple to become a provider for all of that carrier's other existing phone customers, or run them off, which would be messy. And forget about an Apple-branded virtual carrier; it would be subject to the same weaknesses as whichever carrier network it's a part of. What Apple must be looking at is building its own towers, stringing together its own network, and becoming an iPhone-exclusive carrier of its own. Apple learned the hard way that many or even most cellphone users are highly reluctant to leave their current carrier under any circumstances. Apple thought it could float the iPhone out there on just AT&T (and one designated carrier in each nation) and then use that exclusivity to whip said carrier into shape and force it to offer a more Apple-like experience. Not only did that not work, but customers of carriers like major AT&T rival Verizon, along with smaller carriers like T-Mobile and Sprint, rebelled by vowing to never buy an iPhone until it came to their carrier. Four years later, many or most of them have kept their word. As such, Apple has finally placed the iPhone on Verizon such that the iPhone 5 will co-launch on both major carriers, and while deals with Sprint and T-Mobile aren't spoken of, they can't be that far off. But even as Apple is placating those among the public who are married to their current carrier, Steve Jobs must be chomping at the bit to offer something better. Every bit of the iPhone 5 experience, from the sale in the Apple Store, to the hardware and software, to the iTunes integration, is an Apple-like experience. But then the carrier gets involved, and suddenly phone calls have dead spots, data networks have caps, customer service is a joke, and billing is a scam-like gotcha game. Suddenly, too many aspects of the iPhone experience are no better than what Android or BlackBerry is offering, and Apple loses part of the distinction upon which its reputation was built.

Apple's only way out of this is to build its own towers. Granted, the move would royally tick off all of the major carriers. But when you're larger than Exxon Mobil and all the other oil companies, its gives you a certain amount of leverage to work with. Apple would continue to sell the iPhone 5 through the existing carriers, but would offer an in-house carrier experience of its own which would be so superior that plenty of iPhone buyers would move to the Apple carrier the minute their existing contracts are up. But because so many among the public are conditioned to stick with their current carrier no matter what, there would still be plenty of iPhone 5 business left over for the carriers.

Such a move on Apple's part would serve to massively boost iPhone 5 market share as millions who've been on the fence about the iPhone would suddenly see the opportunity to be on an Apple-quality cell carrier as the breaking point. This includes those who have never owned a smartphone and are still using a basic cellphone, which in the U.S. at least, still quietly represents the majority of the population. And those among the "I'll never buy an iPhone because I don't want to have to move to _____ carrier" crowd would see the game reversed, as buying an iPhone would instead allow them to move to a superior carrier experience through Apple. It would lead to an immediate (or at least at end-of-contract) major shift in which existing Android and BlackBerry users would move to the iPhone 5 (or iPhone 6 by the time Apple finished building its network), allowing Apple to scoop up massive iPhone sales and profits which would offset the major cost of building such a network. And even if the network were a loss-leader for years before it paid for itself, it wouldn't matter. As Apple's cash position demonstrates, it can afford to make long any term investments it wants, so long as they even out eventually.