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Verizon iPhone vs. AT&T iPhone

Verizon iPhone vs. AT&T iPhone

Regardless of iPhone versions, how will the iPhone perform in the U.S. market when both Verizon and AT&T eventually offer it?

It’s been well-known for years that AT&T has protected the iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS within its own smartphone portfolio. Will a Verizon iPhone receive the same protection? When figuring out how the iPhone will perform in the U.S. market in the years ahead, that’s one of the key questions to answer.

The answer is simple: The Verizon iPhone will not receive the same protection as the three first iPhones on AT&T. At the end of the day, carriers need to focus on how to generate hard cash as much as the rest of us. By the end of 2011, both AT&T and Verizon Wireless will need to focus heavily on generating LTE-related revenues.

When Verizon Wireless first decided to bet on LTE technology, Steve Jobs called them and said he would have done the same thing himself. The other option Verizon considered wasn’t Mobile WiMAX (think Clearwire), but Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB). The fact that Qualcomm and Verizon Wireless decided to go for LTE can only be described as a historical happening.

As a result of that decision, the U.S. mobile market will change significantly within the next ten years. Sprint is for instance currently making the required moves to ensure that the company will still be a big player in the future. It’s ultimately a matter of being part of the pool that competes for the hottest devices.

For instance, you’ll likely not see Apple enter into an agreement with Sprint or T-Mobile for several years yet. In the direction Apple is headed, a new question emerges: Can the iPhone’s performance to date be used to predict the iPhone’s performance in the future? No, because it boils down to patents and new strategical market decisions.

As the U.S. mobile market moves towards openness, the latter aspect will increase significantly. RIM can no longer enter into an agreement with Verizon Wireless that lets them own the Verizon smartphone market, and Apple can no longer enter into an agreement with AT&T that lets them own the AT&T smartphone market.

Google’s remarkable effort to shake up the U.S. mobile market in a way that forces innovation to become the top priority is the reason for that. Google has a way to go on a platform level like everybody else, but the company will be looked at as having played the lead role of changing the U.S. mobile market to the better when history one day will be written.

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

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