Most in the tech world for months have expected today to arrive, as Verizon Wireless begins accepting pre-orders for the iPhone 4. However, AT&T – although it has known about the potential impact of losing exclusive rights to the Apple handset for an equal period, is still offering a flurry of last-minute reasons why iPhone owners should stay where they are.
Attempting to reach the price-conscious, AT&T has doubled the amount of data iPhone owners can consume while paying the same rate. AT&T is also offering a wireless hotspot service, similar to Verizon’s, for smartphones – at the same price of tethering to a computer. No matter this feature was first provided Android users. However, like some late-night pitchman, wait, there’s more.
AT&T is also putting on a full-court press online campaign to make the dividing line between itself and Verizon even brighter. On the Web and in e-mails, the carrier is touting its iPhone service over its rival. AT&T claims iPhone owners will not be able to talk and browse the Web at the same time at Verizon. AT&T also highlights international calling ability and faster throughput. (Never mind the reviews giving Verizon the nod for fewer dropped calls.)
In January, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told analyst the company expects a “rocky, volatile and hard to predict” 2011. The loss of iPhone exclusivity will probably be the biggest bump in the road. Although AT&T passed Verizon in terms of mobile customers (95.5 million versus 94.1 million), analyst expectations range from AT&T losing 10 percent of its subscribers to Verizon selling 25 million iPhone 4 handsets.
For AT&T, how much it loses by the Verizon pact is in the hands of its rivals. If call stability trumps speed, Verizon will come out ahead. However, if Verizon cannot find a way to avoid the same problems AT&T encountered when it won the Apple phone in 2007, the celebration may happen in Dallas (AT&T’s HQ) instead.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
