iPhone on Verizon Is 'Exclusively in Apple's Court' - Verizon CEO

On today's earnings conference call, Verizon (VZ) CEO Ivan Seidenberg commented on the possibility of offering Apple's (AAPL) iPhone on his network:

in terms of the iPhone, there's nothing really different about this... this is a decision that's exclusively in Apple's court. We obviously would be interested at any point in the future they thought it would make sense for them to have us as a partner. And so we will leave it with them on that score.

I have no further thoughts about why they may have done whatever they did. What they've done has been successful so we have to sit back and give them credit for that. But in the future, what we've done is what John [Killian, Verizon CFO] said earlier, we've expanded our BlackBerry base, we've expanded our base of other devices. We now have the Droid coming out. We have an updated Storm coming out. We have application stores coming out. So I think our view is to broaden the base of choice for customers and hopefully along the way Apple, as well as others, will decide to jump on the bandwagon.

Of course, all that handset choice won't actually make Verizon a more attractive partner for Apple - a more robust wireless network and ongoing pricing leverage against AT&T will.

Gearlog speculates that Apple is waiting for Verizon's LTE network rollout, which means 2011 may the earliest Seidenberg can stop answering this question on each quarterly call.

Comments

[Glenn Haynes:]

I may go back to Verizon from my iPhone although the phone exceeds my expectations, the ATT service is so poor in Kansas City, compared to Verizon - it offers no comparison...

Oct 27 09:33 AM

[User 73203:]

You must be kidding. I doubt we will ever see the iPhone on Verizon. Verizon insists that all the cool features on handsets (e.g. GPS and Maps, etc) be disable and the handset locked. They are the antithesis of an open network.

Oct 27 10:38 AM

[omnimoeish:]

The AT&T network was rock solid until millions of iPhone users came along. I was using it for years before it was Cingular then back to AT&T. I think all of the bandwidth sucking by the iPhone users is what's done it in. If Verizon had that much of an influx in a 24 month period, expect them to have the same, if not worse problems.

And yes, Verizon is nazistic about their network compared to AT&T.

Oct 27 12:31 PM