The Verizon iPhone Will Change Everything

And It Might Launch Immediately After Christmas

Dec 13 2010, 2:25pm CST | by Robert Evans

The Verizon iPhone Will Change Everything

We may be mere days away from the largest tech industry upset since the launch of the original iPhone. A new rumor from a "credible" source reports that the Verizon iPhone will launch "right after Christmas". We could even see a launch before New Years- Verizon warehouses are already taking shipments.

Verizon managers apparently have already received functioning LTE iPhones. The post-Christmas launch appears to be AT&T's last demand of Apple. An earlier launch would completely disrupt their Christmas sales.

The LTE iPhone will be up for sale on the day of the announcement. It will have multi-band and CDMA compatibility. Steve Jobs had hoped to launch an LTE-only iPhone in the summer, but the carriers have been slower than he'd hoped. Apple is apparently pouring money into pushing US carriers towards LTE.

Rumors of the Verizon iPhone have been very good to Apple. Two analysts raised their AAPL stock price targets due to "increased confidence" of an early 2011 launch. One price target has it rising from $360 to $390, while another estimates between $415 and $420. Apple is expected to sell 6 million Verizon iPhones next year.

The rumor to MacDailyNews has not been independently confirmed, but I'd still recommend holding off on buying an AT&T iPhone 4 until after the first of the year. You'd do best to wait until after CES. It seems impossible for Verizon to not launch an iPhone at some point in the next few months.

Motorola has already braced for impact. They and HTC have dominated Verizon sales for the last year-and-change. The LTE iPhone will change that in a big way. Android and iOS will find themselves in the most direct competition yet.

This is very bad news for RIM. Android has nearly blown them off the network and now accounts for 80% of Big Red's smartphone sales. I'm not optimistic that RIM can survive competing against both the DROID juggernaut and Apple's wunder-phone.

Android's market share growth has slowed lately. This has to have Google worried. If iOS can overshadow Android on Verizon, the little green robot will have suffered a major set-back.

But there's another possibility. The LTE iPhone will undoubtedly show huge sales during its first few days, but early 2011 will also see a wave of superphones packing the most polished version of Android yet. The Nexus S has earned iPhone level praise from several big reviewers, and dual-core superphones should blow even the iPhone away in terms of raw speed.

The Motorola Olympus will hit Verizon not long after the iPhone, along with a bevy of mostly Android 4G tablets. If Android can maintain dominance on Verizon's network in 2011, it will have proved its maturity as a platform.

Whatever happens, the next twelve months look to be one hell of a ride.

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Robert Evans
The excitement about new smartphones, tablets and anything mobile drive Robert to unearth the latest rumors and developments in this fast moving space. He adopted 4G as soon as it become available and knows where the mobile market is going.
Robert can be contacted directly at robert@i4u.com.