If you’re like us, you’re already sick to death of hearing about (or waiting for) the iPhone to come to Verizon. Much like The Beatles on iTunes, it doesn’t seem to be a matter of if, but rather when, with a new report claiming it won’t be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show next month.
BusinessWeek is reporting that Apple will launch an iPhone for Verizon Wireless by Valentine’s Day 2011 and not at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as many believe. If the rumors are true, what does this new threat mean to Cupertino’s old flame, AT&T?
“Apple’s introduction of an iPhone for use on Verizon's network will come sometime after the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January, according to a person familiar with Apple's plans who is not authorized to discuss them publicly,” the report reveals.
The news comes on the heels of the December 6 Consumer Reports survey of 58,000 readers who ranked current iPhone exclusive carrier AT&T as “the worst wireless carrier for customer satisfaction -- and by an even wider margin than its similarly dismal fish in 2009.”
Of course, AT&T has little to fear at the moment, at least from recent buyers of the iPhone 4 who are locked into two-year contracts that would be prohibitively expensive to get out of. “Estimates from industry analysts of the resulting number of defections to Verizon from AT&T range from 1 million to 6 million,” the BusinessWeek report claims.
John Hodulik, an analyst at UBS Securities, “predicts that AT&T will sell 8.8 million iPhones in 2011, down from 15.6 million in 2010. Of the 13.3 million Hodulik expects Verizon to sell in 2011, about 2.3 million will be to AT&T refugees, he predicts. An additional 10 million will be current Verizon subscribers who upgrade from other devices, and the rest will come from other carriers,” BusinessWeek concludes.
Then again, the real losers could be the smaller carriers such as Sprint and T-Mobile -- if the iPhone lands on both of their bigger rivals, Hodulik believes they could see defections between 650,000 and 950,000 each in 2011.
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