@topgun966 - I don't doubt at all that Verizon & Apple told each other to piss off, because, even though Apple certainly does need to expand its US iPhone subscriber base far beyond AT&T's borders, and even though Verizon's subscriber base is much larger than T-Mobile's (or Sprint's for that matter), nevertheless, Verizon really cannot offer Apple what Apple needs most from its iPhone carrier partners (while both T-Mobile and Sprint can do so): contract terms with Apple identical to AT&T's.
In making its choice for a 2nd (& a 3rd?) US iPhone carrier network, Apple's primary need is not for a larger subscriber base (because Apple will quickly build whichever carrier it chooses into a much larger 3G/4G carrier than it has been up until now), but instead, Apple utterly needs (in order to avoid a catastrophic failure for the iPhone, like the Mac's in the middle 1990s) what Verizon constitutionally could never surrender: complete control of the iPhones entire UI & app-marketing widget. That is far more valuable to Apple's financial and technological health/development than all the money it would make with Verizon (if such a partnership were somehow possible).
Only after Apple has resuscitated and grandly transformed T-Mobile (and/or Sprint) into (a) dangerous competitor(s) of Verizon, and as Verizon's mushrooming losses to the iPhone then become more starkly dire, will Verizon at last be ready to accept Apple's all-or-nothing terms for a bounteously mutually profitable Apple partnership of its own. Verizon must trash its entire culture to do so. (But, it will. Or else it will rapidly wither away.)
In the meantime, what will be the effect on the iPhone's smartphone competitors, if Apple expands its US iPhone subscriber base beyond AT&T's borders?
Given that Android's Achilles heel, its lack of control of the whole Android widget, significantly hobbles that platform's competitiveness and ability to foster killer-app development, and also given that Android is currently pushing Blackberry hard for second-place smartphone ranking really only by default because so many of them are AT&T-averse iPhone-coveters who are having to settle for that second choice (recent surveys show most smartphone fans want an iPhone, and the 2nd place but still huge number of them very much prefer a Blackberry), until Google somehow sacrifices/trashes all but one primary Android platform and somehow reclaims much more control of the whole Android "widget" from its carriers, Android will only be loved by a rather small minority of hardware-entranced UI-insensitive Linuxy geeks and will thus never acquire a significant developer community. (Obviously, all other smartphones are dead-men-walking.)
So, when the iPhone's subscriber base breaks out beyond AT&Ts borders, Android's current primary attraction will no longer exist. If Android could recapture control of its whole widget, only then could it compete with Number Two (Blackberry).
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
