Encouraged or urged is probably a better way to describe it. It's true though, when ones walks into a Verizon store with the intentions to buy an iPhone, the employees always question the customer and try to interest them in an alternative 4G phone.
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Verizon pushed me to get droid
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Encouraged or urged is probably a better way to describe it. It's true though, when ones walks into a Verizon store with the intentions to buy an iPhone, the employees always question the customer and try to interest them in an alternative 4G phone.
And I would argue that the sales numbers show that American consumers are smart, and have bought more iPhones than 4G LTE Android devices on Verizon.
A fast Android...is still an Android.
I can see there being a lot of unhappy customers when Apple releases their their 4G LTE phone later this year because of they were encouraged, pushed, or urged into to buying a phone running Android and LTE. When the new iPhone comes, I think there will be a lot of folks desperatley trying to sell off their Android phones around the world 
In the last two quarters Samsung sold more Galaxy phones than Apple sold iPhones.
What were you saying about sales numbers and smart consumers?
I quoted this to highlight it.
I cannot emphasize enough that salespeople are not in any way, shape or form unbiased and just want to get you set up with a device that's right for you.
The amount of incentives given to sales people to modify their behavior might boggle the minds of people who aren't aware of this. Pre-loaded credit/debit cards, cash, bonuses, commissions, free or subsidized trips, you name it.
"Sell 3 Acme Devices by the end of the day and I'll give you $100."
"Sell 100 Acme Devices this month, and you get a 2-week all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii."
You get the idea. Want to guess what the sales guy/gal is going to push you to when you walk in? Do you think that just maybe it might be an Acme Device?
Plus, all of this can be given a certain amount of plausible deniability. Want to make it look like your sales team doesn't get commission or spiffs? Then have Acme pay it to the reps directly, and you can truthfully say "We don't pay on commission."
Or, pressure the store managers. Or the regional guys. There can be negative consequences for not selling enough Acme Devices too.
Sure it is, and you're practicing free will, good for you.
But do you honestly think everyone going into a Verizon store has the same state of mind that you do? Most won't, and many will go along with the sales rep.
I will try to track down the source (I read it in another post here)
Here is the fastest link I could find via google. The gist of the article is that "No one really knows, but it probably goes back and forth"
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-04-27/samsung-apple-smartphone-sales/54584550/1
----------EDIT-------------
Found it WAY faster than I thought I would:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/14821301/
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With Samsung we need to know if it is "sold" versus "shipped" the most accurate numbers would come from quarterly earnings calls..
Uh, Samsung is rumored to have sold 41 million smartphones in the first quarter (though iSuppli disagrees and it's odd that Samsung did not mention a sales increase as they have been previously). Samsung makes a ton of smartphones so that 41 million is all their smartphones. Hell, just a few months ago one of the top selling models in the US was a Bada-based phone made by Samsung.
In short, Samsung did not sell 41 million Galaxy devices.
As they should, as 4G LTE is where it's at. Verizon's 3G network is a bogged down mess, and anyone buying an EVDO phone at this point is stupid.
Actually, last time my wife accidentally dropped her cell phone into water, I was happy to be able to nearly instantly get the battery out
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Re: cost. Carriers pay about 40% more on average for an iPhone than for other smartphones.
E.g. A carrier has to pay Apple an average of $640 a phone (except the 3GS, around $350), whereas other top smartphones cost the carrier between $450 to $550 wholesale. (Lesser smartphones drop down to $300 or less, some down to $125 cost.)
That's a huge incentive to sell other phones, and it's why many analysts are predicting that carriers will bend over backwards to push Android and Windows phones... and begin to push back at Apple's prices.
It's a interesting standoff. On the one side, Apple is heavily dependent on subsidized sales, and their phone is nothing without the carriers. On the other, carriers want the customer base that wants iPhones.
that might be true but if you want a iphone from verizon and the saleperson is trying to talk you out of it, that becomes BS to me. Believe me... the older couple that both wanted iphones were not concerned about pulling batteries, they simply wanted what they wanted. To talk people out of something they want for something that might not work as well for them is poor sales service.
I was in verizon yesterday with my mother-in-law (as painful as it was
) and the salesman tried to sell her a LG Lucid for $99 and a $50 mail in rebate. I then said to her why not just order the razr off amazon for 1 penny? The saleman then left us alone to look at all the other phones. Alright, then change my statement to say 'smartphones' instead of 'galaxy phones'.
The point still stands
yeah I have friends that have shopped there and that work at Verizon stores and they're told to push LTE Smartphones over other ones. This is one reason I hope that Apple releases their new iPhone (5 or the NEW iPhone) sooner then later, they're losing out on marketshare and by the time October gets here there will be 203895398 new Android LTE capable smartphones released...