iPhone News Updated

Verizon iPhone 4 close enough to taste, will Apple meet pent-up demand

Verizon iPhone 4 close enough to taste, will Apple meet pent-up demand

The Verizon iPhone 4 is close enough to taste it: testing is so close to completion that a prototype has been spotted in the wild already, current exclusive iPhone partner AT&T is already publicly treating that exclusivity like it’s a thing of the past, and Verizon is even staffing up in preparation for the larger company that it’s about to become – and yet the start of the 2010 holiday season is still a month away.

It all poses the quandary of why Apple and Verizon are choosing to sit on the Verizon iPhone 4 until after 2010 is over, rather than launching it now and reaping the benefits of being able to sell the iPhone to Verizon customers during the upcoming holiday rush.

Several explanations come to mind. The first is that the Verizon iPhone 4 is simply not ready yet. Despite appearing to be nearly done with testing, that doesn’t mean the testing went well. The second is that Apple is in no hurry, seeing how well iPhone 4 sales are going thus far without the benefit of Verizon. The third is that AT&T, still hanging onto whatever shards of iPhone exclusivity remain, is disallowing a Verizon iPhone 4 from happening until 2011. And then there’s Verizon’s mixed feelings about the iPhone, as the carrier knows that a Verizon iPhone will deliver an ugly blow to sales of its own pet Droid project, which had until been seeing significant growth.

But all of those scenarios aside, the bottom line is this: with the Verizon iPhone 4 still in late stage testing (says the photos), that means manufacturing hasn’t yet begun. Even if Apple were to put the Verizon iPhone 4 into immediate mass production today, just how many vPhone units could the company crank out between now and the end of the 2010 holiday season? How many in time for the start of the holiday season? Launching the Verizon iPhone in 2010 would likely mean spending the entire rest of the year trying to play catch-up for a product whose demand will be through the roof. The Verizon iPhone 4 won’t just have the same level of demand that the AT&T iPhone 4 has; while at least some existing iPhone users decided to skip the iPhone 4 and stick with their iPhone 3GS or even iPhone 3G, none of the Verizon customers who want an iPhone currently have one – meaning that they’ll all be in line to get the iPhone 4.

Keep in mind that the existing iPhone 4 model can’t be sold to Verizon customers for compatibility reasons; they can only buy the new Verizon-specific iPhone 4 which Apple has apparently yet to even put into mass production. By waiting until early 2011, Apple will have had the opportunity to amass a warchest of Verizon iPhone 4 inventory, meaning that once the product is launched Apple will be in a position to take advantage of 100% of the pent-up demand for the product – as opposed to launching it now and only being able to take advantage of a fraction of that demand.

[Thanks: http://www.beatweek.com]

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