Verizon CFO John Killian made the following points at the Oppenheimer & Co Annual Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference.
The company plans to launch tablets in the “not-too-distant future.” LTE tablets will launch early next year and LTE smartphones by mid-year.
About 20% of Verizon Wireless subscribers have smartphones and he expects that to grow to at least 40% at some unspecified point. Verizon also thinks it can charge more for using its upcoming LTE network, which it has promised will offer actual speeds of 5-12 Mbps down and 2-5 Mbps up.
Concerning Verizon Wireless getting the iPhone, he said, the company’s assumption is that it will have devices that “act and perform just like the iPhone does,” both in features and sales rates. “If the iPhone became available to us under the right terms, we would be interested in that,” he said, adding that the company’s subscribers are interested in iPhones.
Most market research companies estimate that Android-based smartphones are currently outselling iPhones in the US. NPD reported last week that Android phones, mostly sold by Verizon Wireless, took about a third of the US market, followed by the BlackBerry at 28% and the iPhone at 22%. Some of the Android handset sales, however, could be due to the actual and reported problems AT&T is having with its mobile network.
Apple is very loyal to its resellers, and has made a lot of money from AT&T’s iPhone sales. Verizon Wireless reportedly turned it down when it first tried to launch the iPhone. Apple has to ask whether Android would now be number one in handset sales in the US if Apple had let Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile USA sell the iPhone earlier.