{"id":2864,"date":"2011-01-11T12:42:43","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T17:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=2864"},"modified":"2014-03-17T19:57:00","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T23:57:00","slug":"the-smartphone-wars-verizon-gets-iphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=2864","title":{"rendered":"The smartphone wars: Verizon gets iPhone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Finally, after 18 months of busted rumors and false starts, Verizon got the iPhone today.  Apple fanboys, still stinging from comShare&#8217;s November report that Android had passed the iPhone in U.S. market share, are delirious with joy. People who actually get paid to think about smartphone market trends are less sanguine.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We believe that current estimates of [iPhone&#8217;s] potential sales are overblown,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/BT-CO-20110111-709019.html\">said<\/a> Daniel Hays, who covers telecommunications for consulting firm PRTM.  This is sensible, in view of the iPhone 4&#8217;s failure to reverse Apple&#8217;s market-share losses earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>Other analysts have pointed out that, now that AT&#038;T has lost its exclusive, they&#8217;ll certainly be promoting Android phones more. \u201cNow that AT&#038;T has an incentive to promote Android more than it\u2019s done until now, Android there will grow,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/news\/2011-01-11\/google-s-android-likely-to-lose-as-verizon-gets-iphone.html\">says<\/a> Tero Kuittinen of MKM Partners LP. \u201cIt\u2019s going to compensate for much of the decline at Verizon.\u201d  According to the <cite>Wall Street Journal<\/cite>, AT&#038;T has already committed to shipping a dozen new Android models this year.  This will offset the increase in iPhone sales through Verizon; given AT&#038;T&#8217;s market position, it is even possible that Kuttinen is underestimating and the net effect on iPhone volume will be zero or negative.<\/p>\n<p>My prediction is that the Verizon iPhone will prove no more effective than the iPhone 4 was at stemming the progressive weakening of Apple&#8217;s market position.  It&#8217;s too late; the window when Apple could irrefutably claim superior &#8220;user experience&#8221; began to close with the release of Android 2.2 and slammed shut during the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco.<\/p>\n<p>The coming wave of cheap system-on-a-chip Android phones will crank up the pressure, as the price difference between iPhone and equally capable Android models opens up to three digits in U.S. dollars.  Bloomberg reported Apple&#8217;s stock slightly down and Google&#8217;s slightly up in advance of the announcement, suggesting that investors have already priced in this expectation.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve already spam-binned one attempted threadjacking about this news.  I will continue to do that.  Comments should be attached to this post and not elsewhere.  Content-free flamage will be deleted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finally, after 18 months of busted rumors and false starts, Verizon got the iPhone today. Apple fanboys, still stinging from comShare&#8217;s November report that Android had passed the iPhone in U.S. market share, are delirious with joy. People who actually get paid to think about smartphone market trends are less sanguine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-2864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-smartphone-wars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2864"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5567,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions\/5567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}