Apple's iPhone will soon be available to U.S. subscribers on Verizon's cellular network, if a report from the Wall Street Journal is to be believed.
The publication cites "a person familiar with the matter" as confirming that the nation's biggest wireless carrier will announce support for Apple's game-playing smartphone at a New York press event on Tuesday.
If true, the move would expand the iPhone's availability to a market of roughly 93 million Verizon subscribers and offer another option to potential U.S. iPhone customers who don't want to sign up with AT&T.
AT&T currently enjoys exclusive access to roughly 15 million million iPhone subscribers in the U.S., but analysts expect Verizon support for the phone could cause anywhere from 1 to 6 million of those subscribers to change their service provider.
The potential expansion comes as the iPhone faces increasing competition from devices running Google's Android operating system, which are not tied to any one cellular network. A December ComScore study found the Android user base approaching that for the iPhone in the U.S.
Google's is also reporting 300,000 new activations a day for its increasingly game-friendly mobile platform, outpacing all other mobile platforms worldwide.
But the marketplace for apps on the Android is somewhat fragmented among multiple providers, and different Android phones provide different app performance, as Apple's Steve Jobs pointed out in a recent conference call with investors.
Nothing has been officially announced, though. I would've expected something at CES, at least. Instead, there have been buckets of Android 4G phones. Interesting.
You have to admire Apple's ability to be some of the biggest news during CES without being there or doing anything. Didn't Apple sign a five-year exclusivity deal with AT&T though? One that wouldn't finish until the middle of next year?
It'll be interesting to see what effect it would have on the US market though, and whether the extra customers it might attract would come from one of the other carriers or just reduce the huge growth of android phones to existing Verizon customers.
Also interesting will be the reaction of the manufacturers at CES, who just unveiled [what's now considered] 4G phones with dual core processors and giant displays, to potentially being upstaged by a product that we first saw over 8 months ago.
Actually, now that I think about it, there's a much better explanation for why Verizon might be having an event in NY next week, given that Apple usually (OK always) announce their own products: WP7.
Verizon's CES event was all LTE and android, and we know Windows Phone 7 is supposed to be coming to CDMA some time soon, so it probably didn't make sense to announce that stuff then, and NYC was the home of the WP7 launch.
I could be completely wrong of course, and I think it would be hilarious if it's true, since everyone immediately jumped to assuming it was Apple-related.
It'll be interesting to see what effect it would have on the US market though, and whether the extra customers it might attract would come from one of the other carriers or just reduce the huge growth of android phones to existing Verizon customers.
Also interesting will be the reaction of the manufacturers at CES, who just unveiled [what's now considered] 4G phones with dual core processors and giant displays, to potentially being upstaged by a product that we first saw over 8 months ago.
At&t sucks, so I can see why Apple would expand...I wanna see first month sales on iPhone on Verizon when it does happen.
Verizon's CES event was all LTE and android, and we know Windows Phone 7 is supposed to be coming to CDMA some time soon, so it probably didn't make sense to announce that stuff then, and NYC was the home of the WP7 launch.
I could be completely wrong of course, and I think it would be hilarious if it's true, since everyone immediately jumped to assuming it was Apple-related.