Chiefs Hall of Honor

Apple Misses IPhone Customers as Global Carriers Balk

marsxxzaa — Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:46 +0000

Apple has announced fewer than a dozen new wireless-service providers to sell the device since September 2011, leaving the total at about 240. Holdouts represent billions of would-be subscribers in countries such as China, Japan, India and Russia, said Horace Dediu, a market analyst who runs Asymco.com. Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), Apple’s biggest smartphone rival, sells devices through almost all of the world’s 800 carriers, Asymco said.

China Mobile Ltd. (941), the world’s biggest phone company, and NTT DoCoMo Inc. (9437), Japan’s largest mobile carrier, are among providers that haven’t agreed to carry the iPhone, citing the high costs of subsidies needed to make the device affordable or other terms they find unacceptable. The slowdown in adding new partners is contributing to stagnating iPhone sales growth, giving Samsung-led competitors a potential advantage and putting pressure on Apple to deliver a cheaper device or make other margin-threatening concessions.

“The narrative has been focused on the consumer demand, and the narrative needs to shift to the operator,” said Dediu, a former in-house analyst for Nokia Oyj. (NOK1V) “Apple has run out of the kinds of operators that will say yes to them.”

Apple Misses IPhone Customers as Global Carriers Balk

marsxxzaa — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:14 +0000

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

admin — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 16:16:43 +0000

Some readers have expressed surprise as to the evident danger the Chiefs franchise had in leaving Kansas City as early as 1965, two years after its arrival.

The evidence is clear from news clippings and attendance figures that the move to Kansas City although widely received by the populace and the city’s leaders led by mayor H. Roe Bartle was not the instant success that people today seem to take for granted.

Memory is notoriously optimistic when it comes to feelings about one’s home town team. The evidence is clear that Arrowhead, while a beautiful facility and the envy of teams and fans around the country, began losing ticket holders from the day it opened until the team’s renaissance in the 1990s.

But what is less know is that even upon the team’s arrival in the heart of America, attendance declined late every year from 1963 to 1965 until the 1966 season and the team’s eventual appearance in Super Bowl I.

Fan support shown through ticket sales and ticket holders remains today the single most important evidence of a franchise’s health.

HOME ATTENDANCE FIGURES 1963-1965

1963

Kansas City 28, Houston 7 27,801

Buffalo 35, Kansas City 26 25,519

San Diego 38, Kansas City 17 30,107

Oakland 22, Kansas City 7 24,897

Kansas City 52, Denver 21 18,683

Kansas City 35, Boston 3 16,546

Kansas City 48, New York 0 16,452

Totals 160,015

1964

Kansas City 28, Houston 7> 22,729

Buffalo 35, Kansas City 22 20,904

Kansas City 49, Denver 39 15,053

Kansas City 42, Oakland 7 21,023

San Diego 28, Kansas City 14 19,792

Boston 31, Kansas City 24 13,441

Kansas City 24, New York 14,316

Totals 127,256

1965

Kansas City 27, Boston 17 26,773

Buffalo 23, Kansas City 7 26,941

Kansas City 14, Oakland 7 18,384

New York 13, Kansas City 10 25,523

Kansas City 31, San Diego 7 21,968

Kansas City 52, Houston 21 16,459

Kansas City 45, Denver 35 14,818

Totals 150,866

FIRST YEAR IN THE HEART OF AMERICA

Bob Moore — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 23:02:24 +0000

The Chiefs ended their first year in Kansas City with a blow-out of the New York Jets, 48-0 at Municipal Stadium, ending on a disappointing season (5-7-2) on a positive note. For the afternoon, the Jets made it into Chiefs territory just four times and only once inside the 20 yard line.

The win helped to erase a 17-0 loss to New York just three weeks prior – the franchise’s first shutout defeat in its four-year history. Since that black day, however, Kansas City had exploded for 52, 35 and 48 points, an average of 45 points a game and had help its opponents to an average of just eight points per game.

These were still the early days of the AFL and with every season teams’ fortunes could change quickly. San Diego had been 4-10 in 1962 and finished 11-3. Oakland was 1-11, but came up with a 10-4 season. Kansas City officials were hopeful especially after the way their team had finished up.

Firsts for the franchise included:

Most points: an AFL scoring mark with 59 points on the first day of the season as Len Dawson bcame the first Chiefs player to throw four touchdown passes in a game

Tops in TD’s: Len Dawson finished as the AFL’s number touchdown passer for the second straight season

Pass completions: Most completions in team history (231)

Punting Peaks: Jerrel Wilson with an average of 43.8 yards per kick became the AFL’s top punter

Catching On: Chris Burford with 68 receptions caught more passes than any Chiefs player before

Shut-out: The Chiefs held three teams to no TD’s from scrimmage, tying a mark set in 1960

He’s Back: Hank Stram put an end to the speculation that he might take the Miami University head coaching job by asking the school’s president to withdraw his name from consideration.

Here was the team’s starting lineup for the final game of 1963:

LE Chris Burford

LT Jim Tyrer

LG Ed Budde

C Jon Gilliam

RG Al Reynolds

RT Dave Hill

TE Fred Arbanas

QB Len Dawson

LHB Curtis McClinton

FB Jack Spikes

FL Frank Jackson

LDE Bobby Bell

LT Buck Buchanan

RT Jerry Mays

RE Mel Branch

LLB E.J. Holub

MLB Sherrill Headrick

RLB Smokey Stover

LCB Duane wood

LS Bobby Hunt

RS Johnny Robinson

RCB Dave Grayson

K Jack Spikes

P Jerrel Wilson

LAMAR HUNT’S CHRISTMAS STORY

Bob Moore — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 14:22:28 +0000

Christmas is not another day, even to NFL players who often times find themselves playing that day or preparing to play a day or so later. Grow up in Kansas City in the 1950s and 1960s and you’ll find any sports fan worth his salt that recalling with some pain the Kansas City Chiefs Christmas Day game of 1971, the final game played at the city’s old Municipal Stadium.

Oddly enough, to late Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, he considered that game to be a memorable one even though it ended in defeat and signaled – although it was later – the beginning of the decline of the franchise until its renaissance almost twenty years later.

Hunt said of that team: “1971 was the best team we’ve ever had in Kansas City and this was this was the emergence of the [Miami] Dolphins as a great team.” The Dolphins had lost in the playoffs the previous year and lost in the Super Bowl to Dallas after the win Kansas City.

“The Christmas Day aspect is very vivid to me,” Hunt remembered, “because there was a great hue and cry; the league was criticized for scheduling the game on Christmas Day.”

“It was a terrifically well-played game. Miami scored with about a minute left in regulation time [tying the game, 24-24], and Ed Podolak returned the kickoff 78 yards. We ran several plays and Jan Stenerud attempted the field goal from the mid-20s and missed. He also missed one in the first overtime, a bit longer [a 42-yarder that Miami’s Nick Buoniconti blocked].

“The first one was real makeable. Then [Garo] Yepremian made his field goal in the sixth quarter [after 22:40 of overtime].”

“I remember my son [now Chiefs chairman] Clark, who was 6, went with us very early that morning to Kansas City so we could watch the first game, which would have been Dallas and Minnesota, and we kicked off our game at 4. It was real warm, about 60 degrees. We were sitting in the old press box, which is very narrow and has a long, continuous table that you slid your chairs under.

“About the fifth quarter – it was already dark – Clark went to sleep, and he slept through the longest game. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up.

“It was one of the three or four most memorable games I’ve been involved in. The other thing I remember about it is that that was the day that Curt Gowdy invented the expression ‘sudden victory.’ Unfortunately, it wasn’t a sudden victory for us.”