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Droid or Not, Verizon Still Wants the iPhone

Droid or Not, Verizon Still Wants the iPhone

It seems that Ivan Seidenberg thinks Steve Jobs has a thick skin.

Even though the wireless unit of Verizon Communications launched an aggressive ad campaign for its new Droid handset that directly challenges the iPhone, Mr. Seidenberg, Verizon’s chief executive, said he would be delighted to sell Apple’s smartphone.

“We obviously would be interested at any point in the future that they would be interested in having us as a partner,” Mr. Seidenberg said on a conference call Monday to discuss Verizon’s third-quarter earnings. “This is a decision that is exclusively in Apple’s court.”

In the meantime, Verizon talked up its new line of smartphones, including Research in Motion’s touch-screen BlackBerry Storm 2, that it introduced Monday, and the Motorola Droid, a super-thin phone that uses Google’s Android operating system, that will be unveiled on Wednesday.

“Our view is to broaden the base of choice for customers, and hopefully, along the way, Apple, as well as others, will decide to jump on the bandwagon,” he said.

Verizon added a net of 1.2 million wireless subscribers during the quarter — less than the 2 million added by AT&T, which sells the iPhone. That was a bit better than analysts expected.

Indeed, Verizon’s overall performance slightly beat expectations. Its wireless unit continues to be quite profitable and holding its own in the face of rising customer interest in cheaper prepaid plans.

Like a lot of companies, Verizon said that its corporate business appears to have stopped collapsing, although it hasn’t turned around yet.

There was hardly a sentence in the conference call that didn’t include the phrase “capital discipline,” as the company tried to reassure investors that its heavily marketed network reliability will not eat up all the profits.

Cutting jobs was another big theme. The company has said it would eliminate 8,000 jobs in the second half of this year, and it made it clear that it plans to cut many more in the future, especially in its wireline unit. Indeed, Verizon planned some sort of major restructuring over the next year to further consolidate facilities in its local phone companies.

For Verizon customers, there were only a few tidbits of what is coming up:

• A big push on the Blackberry Storm 2 and the Android handsets this year.
• Palm handsets early next year.
• More integration between cellphones and wireline networks. (No details, but Verizon has talked about being able to use your phone as a remote control for your FiOS TV.)
• By the end of next year, faster wireless data for laptop card users in 25-30 big cities using Verizon’s new 4G network. Phones using 4G will take longer.

Mr. Seidenberg didn’t talk about whether all that cost-cutting and restructuring will disrupt the quality of service for Verizon’s home wireline customers.

[Thanks: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com]

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