Verizon Passed On iPhone Deal
USA Today is reporting that Verizon engaged in talks with Apple over 2 years ago regarding exclusive iPhone distribution. According to the article Apple and Verizon were unable to agree on specific terms of the agreement specifically relating to how 3rd party retailers, i.e. non-corporate stores would factor into the equation. Verizon’s loss however, seems to be Cingular’s gain, as interest in the new Apple phone is beyond high. Time will tell if Verizon’s hesitation will help or hurt the bottom line.
This isn’t a surprise. Anyone who knows how Verizon rolls knew they would balk at something like this.
They’re seriously invested in V CAST and Get It Now to sell music and ringtones. The iPhone would use iTunes to purchase songs (killing those sources of revenue for VZW) and allow you to use those same songs as ringtones (dancing on the corpse of the aforementioned revenue sources for VZW).
Verizon is seriously into controlling the hardware. Bluetooth is crippled and damn near everyone phone in their lineup has the same, standardized user interface. Steve Jobs would probably immolate himself before allowing Verizon to limit functionality on the phone. I’m positive that he would kill the CEO of Verizon before allowing him to remove OS X (or whatever it is) just to replace it with some generic UI that places ease of use over, you know, the cool shit that the manufacturers intended for the phone.
Finally, VZW is just not on the leading edge of phone technology, period. They were the last ones to get camera phones, and they were the last ones to get good camera phones. The iPhone simply doesn’t fit in with their lineup (or their mindset, in my opinion).
This is hardly a surprise.
Not surprised as well. While they may have the best US network, I have to think the other GSM companies will be catching them shortly. I bet they are kicking
themselves right now.
Orga keep in mind the discussions between VZW and Apple were over 2 years ago. Vcast was really only starting up at that point and the standardized interface didn’t yet exist. So with that in mind, there must have been other reasons the deal never happened.