Rumours that Verizon is going to have an iPhone are just a myth.
For ages now the idea that Jobs’ Mob might allow people to jump from AT&T to Verizon has sustained Apple fanboys in these dark nights.
However now some are starting to think it is unlikely.
The first sign was when Verizon and Motorola took the Nintendo out of the iPhone’s antenna problems in an advert.
It was unlikely that Verizon wouldn’t have angered Jobs’ Mob so much if it had wanted to be Apple’s partner. After all Apple does not take such dissent and if you are not praising it completely you are obviously a fan of Microsoft.
Verizon’s boss told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in the course of the week that there were no planned iPhones on his network and he stated that it wasn’t such a big deal.
He said that they have bet the farm on the Android smartphones and have become a major rival to the iPhone.
Ivan Seidenberg said that while everyone else wants to see an iPhone on Verizon the fact that the telco did not have the shiny toy was not harming it. He revealed that even though the iPhone would be a nice addition, Verizon is committed to Android manufacturers such as Samsung, Motorola and HTC. To to do this they had to promise that Jobs’ Mob would not be given special treatment or heavy subsidies.
This is totally the opposite of the arrangement that Apple has with AT&T.
At the moment Verizon is currently focusing on 4G capabilities and will be releasing LTE networks in about 30 locations before next year.
If Apple comes up with a 4G iPhone, Verizon might be interested. There are rumours that Apple is about to make a CDMA version of the iPhone to gain more market exposure. However the Verizon iPhone looks unlikely to be a main customer.