Verizon CEO: We Expected iPhone 5 in Early Summer, Now Planning For Fall

[Darwing]

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Its too bad the iPhone 5 won't have LTE at least I doubt it... Deal breaker for me.

You guys in the USA don't even have the infrastructure yet to get LTE, and Verizon definitely doesn't Hav it so how is that a deal breaker??

 

[ladymacintosh]

I think you guys are all missing the point. This CEO is making excuses for his company not hitting numbers because Apple didn't put out a new phone?! Take some responsibility for gosh sake!

 

[iSee]

LOL, I love that the CEO of Verizon has no more information that the rest of us. He probably logs into MR every day to keep abreast of the latest iPhone and iPad rumors.

 

[chrmjenkins]

This guy knows exactly when they are getting the next iPhone. However, the only way for him to convey that knowledge to his customers is to say that he doesn't know, else he couldn't talk about it.

 

[iSee]

...I can't buy the iPhone 4 (horrid antenna...

Don't believe everything you read on the internets... The iPhone antenna is actually quite *good* -- except for the "grip of death" problem.

My wife's iPhone 4's reception is better than or as good as any phone we've compared it to. (It's a lot better than my 3GS) The grip-of-death problem is real, but -- at least for my wife -- does not happen in real life.

At the end of the day, she can make calls and texts when others are getting no service.

 

[BC2009]

Its too bad the iPhone 5 won't have LTE at least I doubt it... Deal breaker for me.

I don't know why you are getting so many negatives on your comment that "no LTE" would be a deal breaker for you. Given that a phone has a two-year commitment in the US typically, that's an understandable position. I am going to stick with AT&T so the HSPA+ will probably carry me through until LTE is available, but I sure would like battery-efficient LTE support in my next phone.

 

[canucksfan88]

Instead of capping data, they should concentrate on building out their infrastructure. Cheap bastards. Seriously, it's the trend for providers to throttle bandwidth and it's going to be the bottle-neck on future development of content providers. If people have to pay for content, then pay a premium to get that content to their devices, it's going to cripple innovation.

perfect plan! now how do you suggest they pay for this new infrastructure.

 

[JeremyWesley]

Seriously!?!?! Verizon thought that they would get iPhone 4 CDMA in January and then get iPhone 5 GSM/CDMA in June/July, giving iPhone 4 CDMA a shelf life of 6 months, and piss off every VZ customer that bough the iPhone 4.
Yea that makes great business sense. Why the heck would apple waste its time creating iPhone 4 CDMA if it was going to launch a better product in 6 months. They waited 4 years to deliver a CDMA iPhone whats another 6 months..That goes against everything apple does with regards to planing for product in markets.

VZ is lucky apple isn't making the CDMA iPhone a "yearly upgrade" making them wait until January 2012 to get the iPhone 5 CDMA..

and this is the CEO? glad I'm till on AT&T..

 

[Sedrick]

Streaming video is one of the main reasons why I don't have a 'smartphone.'

I don't have WiFi access the majority of the time, so I end up streaming hours and hours of video each month on my old Samsung Eternity.

I've been looking to upgrade to an iPhone for a while now and, like many of you, I was really hoping for an update a few months ago... but even if it comes out in Sept, I'm not so sure if I'll go with it because of the tiered plans.

It makes little sense that they're all fighting over speed and who has the fastest network, but they don't let you fully use it.... here's the world's fastest car, but you can only drive it for a 1/4 mile, once a month.

Sadly, with the way AT&T and Verizon are now with their pricing, I'm leaning toward getting an Android over at Sprint just so I can have an unlimited network.

For the record, I'm currently averaging 2.5 Gigs a month, but have gone over 4 on more then one occasion.

Everyone clamming about 4G when everyone is going to be capped. Funny as hell. Not such a big selling point is it?

Now it will all be about how fast you can use up your monthly allotment.

 

[davjaxn]

Yeah, just check with Apple!

My favorite part:

"...McAdam suggested analysts check with Apple on when the next iPhone will come out "

Yeah, just call Apple. No problem!

 

[KurtangleTN]

I can see the desire for 4G (other than bulk and battery-burning, which will be solved in time). Still, every other phone has much bigger deal-breakers:

* Fewer apps, but more importantly: lower-quality apps. Even those apps that do have Android versions are seldom as good.

* Poor battery life. Potentially "solveable" by manually managing processes and troubleshooting your apps to find out the hard way which ones you shouldn’t have downloaded. No, thanks.

* No retina display? I’ll never go back!

* Android devices are frequently abandoned by the manufacturer and/or carrier, and get no further updates. Now, no device lasts forever; but Android devices get obsolete way too fast.

* Fragmentation: it’s not just a problem for programmers, but for users, when big-name, important apps only work on certain selected models.

* No iCloud? Well, I don’t have it yet, either... but it’s coming, and nothing out there can offer what Apple is offering with iCloud.

* Malware apps. Compare the percentage of users impacted on Android vs. on iPhone.

* Where’s the integrated music store and synching? Where are the movies and TV shows? Android solutions for those are painful half-efforts compared to iTunes.

* No serious tablet companion with a serious library of tablet apps.

And the number one Android deal-breaker for me:

* No full backup/restore! When I replace my iPhone, everything down to the last custom setting and icon placement transfers over. Every song, every document, every high score, every password, every carefully-organized folder with an Emoji icon. On Android, a few things synch to the new device, but the rest is lost in the wind. Unacceptable.

I really hope (and believe) that someone will make a flavor of Android that solves all that, someday. For now, 4G LTE absolutely can’t make up for them.

For now, while Google TALKS in vague buzzword terms about giving me more things I can do with my phone, Apple actually does so! Android is still too limiting.

I hope my 2012 iPhone has 4G (I’m sure it will) but I also hope it doesn’t suffer the problems (bulk and battery drain) of current 4G phones.

Have you actually ever used an Android phone? You seem to just be spurting out the bad headlines with no real specifics.

1. Not true at all, hell Android has apps that are far more powerful then most iPhone apps and for the most part better choice in the market since Google allows things Apple won't without JB. I love being able to use emulators and roms with my Droid and the gamepad attachement without having to void warranty. I love being able to use different homescreen programs to totally make my phone mine.

2. See you can't pick a couple of phones and give the entire Android lineup a bad name. Some Android phones have terrible battery life, some have great. It's a device to device basis.

3. Plenty of Android phones are now offering the same resolution, though in bigger, more usable screens.

4. Not true at all, if the phone is low end it may not get future updates, but that's the nature of a low end phone.. not Android. Most of the flagship phones are updated frequently and will continue to be.

5. Never experienced this in my near 2 years of owning a Droid. The only time I actually even hear of this is for hardware using apps like say a LED Flashlight app that will use the LED flash, new phones may need to be updated to be supported.

I could go on but it seems I'd just be wasting my time.. I'm not saying Android is perfect, but neither is iOS. I'd say multimedia is the iOS's biggest strength and you hit on most of that but the biggest issue is the iOS is only basically on one device, the iPhone 4. I used both a iPhone 3G for about a year before I switched to a Droid. I'd switch back too if the iPhone 5 is fully featured.

The iPhone 4 looks quite a bit outdated when you think that a lot of the flagship Android phones now have dual core processors, 1GB of ram, 4G, high res and bigger screens.

The biggest issue is if the iPhone 5 comes and it doesn't offer 4G it's practically a dead duck, cities all across the country are already 4G and even more will be by the end of the area. Even my smallish city is scheduled to be lit up by the end of the year. The biggest bottleneck with phones now is 3G. Having a dual core processor, a gig of ram, nice camera for video chatting are all great if you're at home or some Wi-Fi spot (where I'd likely be using a computer anyway) but if you can't really use them on 3G it's sort of like putting a Ford Pinto engine inside of a Corvette.

 

[KingCrimson]

The biggest issue is if the iPhone 5 comes and it doesn't offer 4G it's practically a dead duck, cities all across the country are already 4G and even more will be by the end of the area. Even my smallish city is scheduled to be lit up by the end of the year. The biggest bottleneck with phones now is 3G. Having a dual core processor, a gig of ram, nice camera for video chatting are all great if you're at home or some Wi-Fi spot (where I'd likely be using a computer anyway) but if you can't really use them on 3G it's sort of like putting a Ford Pinto engine inside of a Corvette.

Regardless a 4G-less iPhone 5 will sell 20+ million in the first full quarter of release. iPhone momentum is unstoppable, everyone wants to own one. Not anyone I know...

 

[Krispy162]

OMG there is hope!! A Droid User switching to IOS. YAY!! I thought the tide had turned and everyone was leaving IOS for Droid.

I'm on that same boat as well! Left iPhone to go to Droid X.. BIG MISTAKE!

 

[NT1440]

I hate political business people as much as anyone, but he was pretty honest here. His argument for tiered pricing actually made sense and seemed fair. Except for flat out lying that he didn't know when the next iPhone would be launched, not a bad start.

Um, anyone within the industry (and just about anyone with common sense) could have seen since the early 2000's that data usage was going to skyrocket as the technological revolution continues to speed up its J-curve. They should be building network capacity as much as possible (if not for new customers but at the very least the understanding that year over year our data usage is exploding).

I understand that some places' regulations take forever (took AT&T 4 years for one tower in SanFran) but to say now that they realize increased usage due to things like video streaming is going to be huge is nothing but a complete load of ****. Internally all these companies have known for years, probably at least a decade now, that data usage would be enormous. As gatekeepers they understand that they can charge more with tiered pricing at the same time that their networks get hammered with data. Rather than admitting that they need these caps to discourage taking down their underprepared (and not entirely their fault) networks with the naturally projected data usage growth, they just say they didn't see video coming? Really?

This guy is only telling half the story.

 

[lilo777]

Why? It's just a big battery drainer at the moment and Verizon is still expanding their coverage.

Do you prefer GPRS? It's a battery miser, you'd be happy with it.

 

[RWil85]

I'm on that same boat as well! Left iPhone to go to Droid X.. BIG MISTAKE!

can you elaborate on this a bit?

I'd be curious to know, from your side of things, what you miss from iOS/iPhone that you're lacking in AndroidOS/DX?

 

[kdarling]

Worry not Firstly, those numbers are fishy. ("Activations?" Tell me more. And does that include those Asian Android variants that don’t even run Android Apps or use Google services? A couple of those are big movers.)

As pointed out in posts all around the forum, no, the cheap variants that don't use Google services are not counted in activations.

That's why the Apple execs said they "think the Android activation number is a difficult one to get (their) hands around"... because they (like us) have no clue how extensive the number of Android devices being sold really is... and that must be a bit worrisome to them.

Um, anyone within the industry (and just about anyone with common sense) could have seen since the early 2000's that data usage was going to skyrocket as the technological revolution continues to speed up its J-curve.

Yes, but the speed of adoption would not be as clear.

I understand that some places' regulations take forever (took AT&T 4 years for one tower in SanFran)

That was just an excuse Jobs gave for ATT's lack of coverage and poor planning for UMTS.

They don't have to put up new towers. They could simply lease space from one of the dozens of shared tower / building sites that already exist.

No doubt that's how they finally got more 3G in there.

but to say now that they realize increased usage due to things like video streaming is going to be huge is nothing but a complete load of ****.

Hindsight is wonderful. I've told parts of this story before, but it bears repeating in this case.

In the mid 1990s I was part of a major carrier's future plans group that was tasked with brainstorming what the future might be like when broadband was more ubiquitous.

Remember, back then realtime MPEG encoders were $120,000 each, not the $35 they are now. 1TB of storage for videos was also over $100,000. We knew this stuff would get cheaper, but we had no conception by how much

Anyway. some things we got right. We correctly predicted that people would store their photos online, and that instead of actually sending the pictures to friends, they could just send a link to their photos.

Some things we got wrong because we did not conceive of a dotcom burst. We thought the phone companies would be the only entities who could afford the storage for those online photos etc. Who could have foreseen the rise of Flickr, Picasso, and all the other ad-driven sites? Seriously.

The same goes for video. The phone companies thought they would be the ones delivering video, which means they could plan the capacity they needed. Again, who could have foreseen the rise of sites like Hulu and Netflix? Or hundreds of millions of smartphones with players for those sites?

So... I'm telling you from ACTUAL EXPERIENCE that yes, it's quite possible that they could not predict the huge increases that have occurred just in the past few years. It takes a decade to plan out capacity.

 

[GuitarDTO]

Seriously!?!?! Verizon thought that they would get iPhone 4 CDMA in January and then get iPhone 5 GSM/CDMA in June/July, giving iPhone 4 CDMA a shelf life of 6 months, and piss off every VZ customer that bough the iPhone 4.
Yea that makes great business sense. Why the heck would apple waste its time creating iPhone 4 CDMA if it was going to launch a better product in 6 months. They waited 4 years to deliver a CDMA iPhone whats another 6 months..That goes against everything apple does with regards to planing for product in markets.

VZ is lucky apple isn't making the CDMA iPhone a "yearly upgrade" making them wait until January 2012 to get the iPhone 5 CDMA..

and this is the CEO? glad I'm till on AT&T..

Uh, because Apple and Verizon are both in it to make money. They are businesses...that's what they do. A 6 month gap between the CDMA iPhone and an iPhone 5 would have ticked some people off, but MANY people (consumers at least) were anticipating it. I bought an iPhone 4 when it came out on Verizon, and I fully recognized at the time that a newer phone may be coming out in the summer but I chose to buy the iPhone 4 anyways. If an iPhone 5 were out now, I would have already sold my 4 on eBay and bought the 5, giving both Verizon and Apple more of my money. I'm not the only one....Apple would have made a LOT of money releasing the iPhone 5 in the summer only 6 months after the 4. But alas, they'll make a lot of money regardless. I personally believe the Verizon CEO even though it comes off as making excuses.

 

[GuitarDTO]

The biggest issue is if the iPhone 5 comes and it doesn't offer 4G it's practically a dead duck, cities all across the country are already 4G and even more will be by the end of the area. Even my smallish city is scheduled to be lit up by the end of the year. The biggest bottleneck with phones now is 3G. Having a dual core processor, a gig of ram, nice camera for video chatting are all great if you're at home or some Wi-Fi spot (where I'd likely be using a computer anyway) but if you can't really use them on 3G it's sort of like putting a Ford Pinto engine inside of a Corvette.

Completely disagree. The iPhone 5 won't have 4G, and it will make sales of the iPhone 4 look like Droid Eris. The biggest bottleneck in almost every Android phone right now is battery, especially 4G phones. Apple isn't going to sacrifice the battery life for current power hungry 4G chips for at least another year.

 

[sclawis300]

CEO of Verizon isn't a regular joe, and he has a much greater need to know what Apple is likely to do. So in addition to his contacts directly with Apple, Verizon should have some employee check out online info to keep the CEO better informed. I knew about Apple's iPhone plans before the Verizon CEO did? That's just sad.

If you truly believe this then I feel sorry for you.

 

[sclawis300]

Seriously!?!?! Verizon thought that they would get iPhone 4 CDMA in January and then get iPhone 5 GSM/CDMA in June/July, giving iPhone 4 CDMA a shelf life of 6 months, and piss off every VZ customer that bough the iPhone 4.
Yea that makes great business sense. Why the heck would apple waste its time creating iPhone 4 CDMA if it was going to launch a better product in 6 months. They waited 4 years to deliver a CDMA iPhone whats another 6 months..That goes against everything apple does with regards to planing for product in markets.

VZ is lucky apple isn't making the CDMA iPhone a "yearly upgrade" making them wait until January 2012 to get the iPhone 5 CDMA..

and this is the CEO? glad I'm till on AT&T..

I knew you were an AT&T customer 1/4 of the way into your post. Obviously you did not listen to the announcement or read posts by 90% of people who thought for sure that Verizon would be getting a new phone 6 months later.

 

[jesterscourt]

Instead of capping data, they should concentrate on building out their infrastructure. Cheap bastards. Seriously, it's the trend for providers to throttle bandwidth and it's going to be the bottle-neck on future development of content providers. If people have to pay for content, then pay a premium to get that content to their devices, it's going to cripple innovation.

Well I gotta refute you here:

Verizon, founded in 2000, has invested more than $60 billion nationally to increase the coverage and capacity of its premier nationwide network and to add new services

Thanks Google. That would appear to be billion, you know with a big B. And you think the 700 Mhz spectrum was cheap to purchase from the federal government? Yeah, no money spent on infrastructure. I doubt that number is even including acquisitions, you know like Alltel.

On another note, no one is paying a premium for content, data plans still start at $30 for smartphones, and there is no premium surcharge just because you are lucky enough to own a 4G device like some of the other carriers. All data is capped, you just didn't know it yet. Sprint's unlimited data gets throttled if you hit their internal limit, and if you use more than 300 megs roaming, you get penalized. Even most high speed internet home connections are now capped, with ATT, Comcast, et. al.

Also you might want to read up on what LTE can do as far as maximums. 20 megabit down is nothing, just like the difference between CDMA Rev 0 and CDMA Rev A for a 3G connection was a substantial leap, LTE has a long life ahead of it.

 

[NebulaClash]

If you truly believe this then I feel sorry for you.

Why? If you can't refute a post with reason and logic, I'm not the one who should be pitied.

Apple's partners routinely don't have the full picture. They should research Apple to get as much info as possible. The fact that I knew more than the CEO of Verizon is shocking. That you think this idea of getting info from every available source is wrong tells me you might not know as much about the business world as you'd think.

 

[KurtangleTN]

I'm sure the iPhone 5 if it's without 4G will still have many of the typical Apple launch hype.. you know the guy hanging outside an Apple Store 2 weeks before launch, the hype from the tech sites, etc.. but looking long term if it's just simply an iPhone 4S there could be lost sales.

Just about every carrier right now is heavily advertising 4G. Verizon especially has put a lot of money into both setting up and advertising it. Everytime they light a new city up with 4G the newspapers in the area report it, it's in their local news.. people talk about it. When they get into the stores and ask about it salesman are going to be trained to talk up and likely sell them the 4G phone (that they probably get a better cut out of and control more then an iPhone). That's going to be an Android phone.

Apple is sort of at a critical time right now, the walled garden deal is great if you're making a large profit per device but I can't imagine Apple's is really rolling in iPhone hardware sales as much as they are iTunes sales/App store sales and in order to get those they need the devices in as many hands as possible, they need the market share unlike the Mac.

 

[Krispy162]

can you elaborate on this a bit?

I'd be curious to know, from your side of things, what you miss from iOS/iPhone that you're lacking in AndroidOS/DX?

It's not so much of what android is lacking compared to iOS its just the crispness of iOS. I had the iPhone 3g & Ip4 each for year and never saw them breakdown as fast as my X has.

It was the little features that drew me to Android (ie. Customizable ringtones, widgets, drop down notification bar). I know apple will get there (Slowly but surely) Now I realize that i'd rather take a smoother OS & easier UI over those features that android currently has over iOS.

iOS 5 looks really promising too..