Verizon Still Hopes to Have iPhone in Its Court

29th October, 2009 by Adina
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Verizon reported the results for the summer quarter, which revealed a growth of more than ten percent year-over-year for its operating revenue, a value of $27.3 billion. The earnings per share, however, dropped 30.5 percent, from 59 cents per share to 41 cents per share, the equivalent of $2.88 billion. The growth came mainly from cell phone and FiOS new customers.

Cellular business had controversial results. The acquisition of Alltel brought 89 million new users, marking a growth of 25 percent in the subscription numbers, but only added 1.2 million new customers during this summer, which is significantly less than the two million new subscribers of AT&T reported to the same quarter. While the average data revenue per person went up 17.2 percent, to $15.59, the combined revenue for these users has dropped 2.2 percent, to $51.04. The average revenue for AT&T climbed 3.8 percent and figures show a narrower gap in mobile subscribers between the two companies to 7.4 million customers. There is also a reverse in the amount of customers willing to pay compared to AT&T. This happened mainly because while AT&T benefit from the iPhone’s notoriety, Verizon still doesn’t have a comparable smartphone to present. Verizon has lost some customers in favour of the rival AT&T and one third of the new iPhone users were new to AT&T’s network.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg expressed once more his company’s position on the iPhone. He stated that the decision to bring the iPhone to Verizon belonged only to Apple and that he hoped Apple would sign with Verizon, making the iPhone part of its phone catalogue. However, the recent campaign Verizon launched against the iPhone, criticizing the closed and single-tasking platform of this one and promoting the Motorola Droid as a challenger to Apple’s device doesn’t make any good to the relationship between the two companies. As a consequence of this sharp ad campaign it seems there is no more hope to eliminate the rift between Verizon and Apple. As many people think, Verizon has even sacrificed the BlackBerry Storm 2 in favour of the Motorola Droid by scheduling the Storm 2 launch the same day as the Droid’s unveiling and guaranteeing this way little attention for the once mediatised Storm series. This is a sign that Verizon has taken the one-way road.


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