iPhone 4G for Verizon in 2010?

This is pretty rough speculation based on two stories released yesterday by Electronista. But if you connect the dots, you’ll see why the chances of a iPhone 4G for 2010 or early 2011 has increased.

First is Verizon’s plan for the 4G rollout – instead of the standard rollout of 3-4 cities per month for the first 6 months, and accelerating thereafter, Verizon announced that they’ll push out 4G to 25-30 cities at the initial launch. The first question to ask yourself is that with no major announcements of a 4G handset, why would Verizon be in such a rush to put 4G out there? Yes, Clear is now available in a few cities, but their speeds are comparatively low to what Verizon is expecting 4G to provide (4Mb/s for Clear WiMax vs 8-12Mb/s for 4G/LTE). Verizon also needs to compete with the 7.2Mb/s HSPA network AT&T will start to offer – CDMA and HSPA currently offer theoretical speeds of about 3.6Mb/s, with real-world speeds of around 1Mb/s, and when HSPA speeds double, it is expected that speeds will increase to 1.5-2Mb/s for users who have the device to take advantage of it.While AT&T might have double the speed, it doesn’t seem to necessitate a faster rollout – Clear and AT&T aren’t accelerating their technology rollouts to compete with each other.

It would seem to me that you would only simultaneously push this type of release if you were going to offer a high-profile device nationwide to go with this network. Now that doesn’t specifically mean iPhone – we may see many LTE phones at the 2010 CES show – but there aren’t a whole lot of top-tier device manufacturers (Apple, Palm, Blackberry) who can push a high profile device.

Next is the rumor that Verizon is suddenly giving the Palm Pre the cold shoulder. The Pre is a pretty good device – and with the exception of fighting with Apple over iTunes syncing, there aren’t many downsides to the device. Why Verizon would want to not carry a device that would surely please customers is curious. The presumption is that some other smartphone manufacturer is pressuring Verizon to not carry the device. It could easily be a term of the agreement between Apple and Verizon if Apple were to bring the iPhone to their network, since Apple is working to block Pre syncing at every update.

There are a few other possibilities – it could be Microsoft’s supposed new phones. They could not want the Pre on Verizon because if the Pre is launched in Q1 and “power users” upgrade to the Pre (from either a first gen Storm or other smartphone), they wont be eligible to upgrade again so soon. Likewise, I would expect an announcement on Apple’s intentions as soon as they are legally allowed to announce something, even if its six months before the unit ships – Apple did this in 2007 with the original release because it kept people from upgrading and ensured a large number of upgrade-eligible customers at the release of the phone (if you assume that people upgrade every 2 years, that would mean that Apple had 25% of AT&T’s customers as the bare minimum who, if they wanted, could postpone upgrades until the iPhone came out).

Its my opinion that inevitably, Apple will have to go multi-carrier in the US simply because AT&T’s network cant handle all the devices Apple wants to sell – we see that now, AT&T has had a hard time keeping up. We’ll see how today’s launch of MMS goes, but considering that carriers around the world have been handling MMS for a few months now, if AT&T screws this up, their incompetence has sealed the deal to let the exclusivity agreement expire in 2010 and Apple to allow go after other partners in the US.

Edit 9/25: Electronista is reporting that a note from an investment bank indicates that the Pre is still on track with Verizon so its unknown as to whether or not it will happen or not.