Verizon Wireless plans to sell Apple’s iPhone for as low as $200 starting next month, the carrier said today. Verizon, the largest cellular company in the United States, serving some 93 million customers, said it would start selling the phone on February 10, ending AT&T’s three-year old status as the exclusive U.S. provider for the iPhone.
The iPhone 4 through Verizon Wireless will run on Verizon’s CDMA network – not their newly minted “4G” network running the latest LTE technology. iPhone 4 on Verizon Wireless will also include new Personal Hotspot capabilities allowing customers to use iPhone 4 to connect up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices.
The iPhone 4 will be available on the Verizon Wireless for a suggested retail price of $199.99 for the 16GB model and $299.99 for the 32GB model with a new two year customer agreement. iPhone 4 will be available at more than 2,000 Verizon Wireless Communications Stores nationwide, online at www.verizonwireless.com/iphone, and at Apple Retail Stores.
What will it mean to AT&T? Not much, according to Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T’s wireless business. It is a 3G phone, not a faster LTE device. AT&T makes the case that their HSPA+ network is faster than Verizon’s EVDO Rev. A network, based on CDMA technology.
Credit Suisse estimates that AT&T will have 18.4 million iPhone subscribers at the end of 2010, of which 15.9 million, or 86%, will be under contract. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, estimates that Verizon could activate as many as nine million iPhones in the coming year, or as much as 40 percent of its total smartphone sales for the year, reports the NY Times. Up to 6.5 million of those subscribers could be defectors from AT&T, he said.
AT&T diversified its smartphone lineup last week at CES, and touted new 4G Android devices from Motorola, HTC and Samsung. AT&T says it will launch 20, 4G devices this year with a dozen Android devices on tap in 2011.
AT&T’s Chief Marketing Officer David Christopher said it will offer a Motorola’s Honeycomb Android tablet in the second quarter running off its current network. LTE tablets will follow in the summer.
AT&T devices will use both their HSPA+ and LTE network. Their LTE transition will go through 2013, but won’t begin until after the first half of the year.
AT&T CTO John Donavan said combining HSPA+ and LTE results in better hand-offs between services.
Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel, introduced two WiMAX devices –– the HTC EVO Shift 4G with a Qualcomm MSM7630 (800 MHz) processor, and the MiFi 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot by Novatel Wireless that are far cheaper than the devices being sold by its rivals. The WiMAX-enabled EVO Shift, which sports a slide-out QWERTY keypad, is only $149.99 and Mobile Hotspot costs $49.99 (on a 2 year contract).
The bottom line is whatever works. If service is poor where you need it, iPhone fans may now have an option of jumping ship to Verizon.
If you want a “real” 4G phone, however, Sprint/Clearwire is still the only game in town…unless you buy into the “HSPA+ is 4G” argument of T-Mobile USA, of course. Or you could wait. Verizon will make available four new 4G LTE smartphones by the middle of 2011, including the HTC Thunderbolt, LG Revolution, Motorola Droid Bionic and Samsung 4G LTE.
