iPhone News Updated

Verizon iPhone a done deal and soon, say four insider clinchers

Verizon iPhone a done deal and soon, say four insider clinchers

The Verizon iPhone is a done deal for early 2011, say these four insider clinchers which could each be explained away separately but when combined paint a picture of an Verizon launch being the next iPhone news Apple serves up once the clock strikes 2011. Here are the big four.

Verizon has a secret: When you’ve got a secret you want to share but aren’t allowed to, you start dropping every increasingly obvious hint you can, in the hopes others will put two and two together. The mere fact that Verizon has TV a TV ad for the iPad is over the top. The fact that the ad is in heavy rotation is a desperate teletype from the carrier to its customers: “We’ve got the Verizon iPhone on the way, we just can’t tell you about it. Hang in with us a little longer, no need to switch to the iPhone carrier, because we’re about to become an iPhone carrier. Why else would we be running all these ads just to announce that we’re now one of dozens of retailers who resell the iPad? We’re giving you the strongest hint we can, without actually breaking whatever secret vows we’re under.”

AT&T doth protest too much: When you know that bad news about you is about to drop, you go into overtime trying to convince everyone around you that you’re fine. In doing so, you often telegraph what that impending bad news is. For AT&T, the bad news is that it’s about to have to start sharing the iPhone with Verizon. And the pre-emptive “I’m fine” assurances are coming in the form of TV ads for the new AT&T BlackBerry, the new AT&T Windows Phone 7, and before it’s all said and done, we’ll probably see ads for the new AT&T Zune as well. AT&T wants you to know it’ll be fine in the Verizon iPhone era. Apparently, it doesn’t mind being the one to inform you that the Verizon iPhone era is coming.

Motorola thinks it’s AT&T: Same story as above, except with Motorola playing the role of AT&T, the mouth of Motorola’s CEO taking the place of AT&T’s TV ads, and the Verizon iPhone being the big bad news for the company which manufactures some of the iPhone’s top Verizon-based competitors. If you want double confirmation, the interchangeability of the actions of AT&T and Motorola at the moment seals it.

The future is long: Apple doesn’t comment on future, potential, unannounced products. Except when it sometimes makes a point of announcing what it won’t be bringing to market, so as to steer attention back to the path the company is actually on. And yet every time Apple has the chance to make it clear to U.S. consumers that it has no intention of doing a Verizon iPhone any time soon, it declines to, even though such a definitive statement would surely motivate at least some Verizon holdouts to go ahead and switch to AT&T and buy an iPhone. If Apple could truthfully make a dismissive statement about a Verizon iPhone, it would certainly do so. Instead, when Apple is asked directly about the matter, Steve Jobs says things like “the future is long.” The clear cut conclusion is that he’s declining to dismiss the possibility of a Verizon iPhone because doing so wouldn’t be an honest statement. In other words, well, you do the math.

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

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