Verizon iPhone still good for Q1 2011?
The indicators in most crystal balls are still pointing toward an iPhone with a Verizon logo sometime early in 2011, with a lot of extra rumor-mongering the fates of AT&T and Verizon thereafter.
When even the Wall Street Journal is willing to go a goodly distance out on the limb, most news stories tend to leave the “rumor” category and enter the “fact” category. The WSJ has indeed said in black and white that Verizon will get the iPhone early in 2011, but the silence from the Verizon and Apple camps seems to have kept this particular bit of news from becoming even a factoid. Instead, the Verizon iPhone has remained a persistent rumor, retaining the label “speculative” instead of being branded as a fact. This column is not going to change any of that.
However, all of the indicators still point to a Verizon iPhone in Q1 2011. This despite the part where the exclusive Apple – AT&T deal is still rumored to run until 2012, that no one has ever seen an iPhone bearing the Verizon logo, that no iPhone with the CDMA chip required by Verizon (or an iPhone on ‘world’ configuration) is known to exist, and that neither Apple nor Verizon are willing to utter one simple declarative statement either for or against the proposition. When one throws T-Mobile (and sometimes Sprint) into this mix, the rumors get downright confusing.
Meanwhile, the financial side of the situation is getting weirder by the day. As an example, UBS Securities’ analyst John Hodulik is of the belief that AT&T will do better by losing the iPhone than Verizon will do by gaining it, according to a TopNews story. Hodulik thinks that there will not be a mass iPhone migration away from AT&T, so no bad news there, and also that Verizon will have to invest a lot of cash up front paying for their end of the iPhone’s price, cash that will be repaid slowly over the two years of the service contract. This almost makes me glad that I’m not a major cellular carrier.
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