Apple is reportedly planning some sort of secret event on or around Valentine’s Day, though knowing what everyone is expecting early this year, will it really be a secret at all?
Tech heads hoping for a “surprise” CES unveiling of the Verizon iPhone may find a different kind of surprise – the total absence of any such announcement. Instead, Verizon will be focused on its 4G lineup and Apple, well, is never at CES anyway.
And we all know that Apple has to be the center of the universe whenever it has something to say, so it seems much more likely that the announcement of a Verizon iPhone would come when nothing else is going on.
According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report, there will absolutely not be a Verizon iPhone announcement at CES, but the special Apple event will occur before Valentine’s Day.
Verizon is consistently ranked the consumers’ choice as the best mobile carrier in the country. And the iPhone is by far the top-selling smartphone on the market. So colliding those two forces together will create a massive thunderburst in the mobile community.
But it will be a huge tragedy for AT&T, which always ranks last in customer service but was holding strong thanks to its locked-in iPhone exclusivity. That deal assumedly expired this year.
Existing iPhone customers may not be so quick to jump ship to Verizon. For one, they’re likely to still be locked into their AT&T contract, but also, Verizon runs on a different standard of mobile network than AT&T. It can’t make calls outside of the US, has limited texting capabilities, and has slightly slower 3G data speeds. But for those people looking to buy an iPhone for the first time, AT&T has a lot to be worried about. Even with Verizon’s shortcomings, it doesn’t come close to AT&T’s legendary rate of dropped calls, very poor customer service, and spotty coverage areas within the US. [[iPhone]]
