While the concept of the iPhone being special and iPhone buyers entitled to special early upgrades, is an extremely popular theory, it is nothing more than a myth.
The iPhone sells itself, with demand extremely high. A fact that's no secret to anyone except those isolated and, or ignoring the mainstream press.
What the average person does not know, is that it's very expensive for AT&T and other carriers to sell iPhones. The subsidy the carrier pays to reduce the price that upgrades sell for, is far greater than Apple's cost. Therefore Apple's able to maintain a very high gross profit per phone, whereas the carriers barely scrape by.
It's this very reason that there was much conjecture as to whether Sprint could sell iPhones and survive. In lieu of being as well capitalized as Verizon and AT&T, Sprint really has it's work cut out for themselves.
That aside at the end of the day, both AT&T and Verizon have very carefully calculated strategies in place, when it comes to selling the very expensive iPhone.