The Verizon iPhone Cometh?

I've mentioned a few things in the past couple days that have some of my online followers and friends wondering if I'm finally going to jump on the Verizon iPhone bandwagon.  Since this really doesn't fit PhoneCan and our desire to avoid pure speculation, I'll tell it to you here.

After all this time, I think there might be some validity to the current crop of Verizon iPhone rumors.  I'm still holding out for Tuesday, though.  For all we know it's an announcement about corporate leadership, or a Windows phone.  Or, heaven forbid, another Palm.

I'm going to leave newspapers and media sites out of this.  When someone passes gas inside the Wall Street Journal's bathroom, another iPhone rumor emerges.  And once the WSJ says it, well, every other news organization in the country thinks it's got to be true.  To me, the WSJ is about as reliable as The Enquirer, and I hate to say it, The Enquirer just might have more to go on.

So here's what I'm seeing:

1) Upgrade policy is changing after January 16.  Upgrades will be four months before the end of a two year contract, or two months before the end of a one year contract.  No more early upgrades, no more New Every Two discount.

At first, I saw some carrier-logic in this.  When I started with Verizon, the pricing structure was simple: full retail minus about $120 = 2 year pricing, add $50 mail in rebate and you have your final price.  Those with New Every Two got an extra $100 or less off, depending on the final price of the phone.  Those without New Every Two got the final price without any additional discount.

As times have changes, so have the subsidies, or discounts, involved.  Today, a phone may be discounted anywhere from $120 to $350 or more, most of which seem to be within the $230 to $320 range.  The most popular phones typically have the biggest subsidy.

New Every Two has also changed over the years.  Where it used to be $100, it then went to $100 or $50, depending on your monthly rate, and then it went to $50 or $30, depending on your monthly rate.  As subsidies went up, New Every Two went down.

When this was announced, I was under the impression that phone subsidies were getting out of hand.  In some cases, a $570 phone was being discounted to $100 - a $670 discount!  It made sense that they would change it.

But if you switch the assumption to include an iPhone - wait a moment, now there might be more to this.  If Verizon and Apple inked a deal, they probably had to concede on certain regular practices to fit the device into the product line.  Namely, no more subsidies on steroids.  Not for the Phone of Phones.  No more extra discounts.  They may have needed to play nice with Apple, and this could be the result.

2) The return policy is changing.  I haven't seen much on this, but that's understandable since CES has been the talk of the web this week.  Verizon, who had had their return period set for 30 days for many years now, is changing to 14 days.  They say this is to match the market.

At first, I thought that this also made some sense, when you look at it through the carrier's point of view.  Frankly, most people know if a phone is worth returning within the first week or less, and most people generally return within that time frame.  The people who draw it out until the end of thirty days are more likely the people who are short on cash, only needed something temporarily, or did something to the phone.  14 days made some sense.

But wait.  The return policy a few years back was changed to 30 days from 15 days.  Why not go back to 15 days?  Why exactly a week?  That extra day wasn't a problem before.

Now let's look at it with Apple eyes.  How long is Apple's return period?

14 days.

Another concession on Verizon's part?  Perhaps.

3) Press conference announced.

Why hold a big press conference five days after already having a huge press conference at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show?  What was so important that it couldn't be mentioned at the same time as four new 4G LTE phones and a handful of data products?

There's a chance this is an announcement for some change in corporate structure.  Or something about Windows Phone 7, or a new WebOS device.  But what if - just for a second - it's an iPhone announcement?  Is it possible?

Many think, yes.  Normally, Steve Jobs dictates when and where a product is announced.  But a mid-year release, if it's merely a minor hardware update, may or may not deserve such normal fanfare.  It's really nothing new, per se, just a rehash that works on another network.

Or maybe, given the sense of "it's been a long time coming," this is unique and different for Apple and Verizon.

The only way to know for sure is to wait for Tuesday.

4) Mandatory training.

We just found out that within the next week and a half we need to send 30 people to a four-hour training over the course of five days.  The training name is innocuous, and could be for anything.  Admittedly, the training DOES say that there will be training on new 4G devices, so maybe that's all it really is.  But a shot-notice training compressed into a shorter than normal time is not typical.  In fact, if it's typical of anything, it's typical of a big change or launch.

Still, it could be for anything.

What I haven't seen yet:
I haven't seen much indication on the Verizon end of things.  No blackout period.  No POP material or mysterious boxes we can't open.  No non-disclosure agreements sent around.  No manager-only meetings, aside from the regular.  Nothing.

Then again, it's not beyond Verizon to wait until the last minute to unleash all sorts of shipping, store resets, and material.  It's happened before, to maintain a competitive advantage.

Ultimately, there are just as many questions as there are speculations.  At this point, the only way we'll know for sure is to wait for Tuesday with all the rapt attention we can muster.

Just don't be disappointed if it's not what it appears to be.

Epik