Monday, January 31, 2011

Verizon and Apple finally team up!

Alright, it's been quite a while since my last post. Part of the reason was the holidays, they are crazy around here. Also, there wasn't much happening on the iPhone scene. Well, that has all changed. There have been rumors for a very long time that Apple was developing a CDMA version of the iPhone. All of those rumors over the years had been proven false. However, sometimes, the rumors might actually drive the product to be developed, and in this case, that is what happened. With At&T's exclusivity contract for the iPhone ready to run out, Apple decided now was the time to put their top selling product with an additional carrier. And Verizon was lucky enough to get the phone call from Steve Jobs that they were the ones to relish in the awesomeness that is the iPhone 4.

There are a lot of good things that will undoubtedly come out of this new market share of the top smartphone in the world. First and foremost, even more people will now be able to enjoy this phone. This will lead to more Apps being purchased from the App Store (which is already at over 10,000,000,000 downloads). And that number will likely double in the next couple of years since Verizon is one of the biggest wireless carriers in the world. That will definitely lead to more revenue for Apple and more App developers arriving on the scene. Let's not forget the level of competition this will create. We have already seen this in the data plans. When At&T customers upgraded from their iPhone 3G/3GS to the iPhone 4 (or purchased new service after the iPhone 4 was introduced) they were no longer given the option of an Unlimited Data Plan at $30 per month. They were given two options: 200 MB at $15 per month, or 2GB at $25 per month. Now, 2GB of data does sound like quite a bit, but if you are paying for the new tethering option through At&T to be able to use your iPhone 4 as a modem, you could easily destroy 2GB of data and get charged overage. Verizon has stated that they will offer an unlimited data plan for the iPhone 4 at a price tag of $30 per month. Undoubtedly, this was in hopes of getting data-heavy At&T users to switch. Well, At&T wasn't just going to sit back and watch their customers drop, so they are leaning towards bringing back the unlimited data plan. It will only be available to customers who were forced to switch off of it when they upgraded to the iPhone 4, but it's a start.

Of course, Tmobile users were already able to use the iPhone, as long as they had it jailbroken and unlocked. Apple still has not gotten on board with Tmobile officially, but hopefully this will open up talks between the two. It would be nice to see the iPhone spread across numerous carriers just like the HTC and Samsung smartphones.

If you are, or would like to be, on Verizon and you're ready for the iPhone4, you can pre-order and/or get on the email list for updates and order dates by going HERE.

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