At PCmag.com, Sascha Segan argues that Verizon Wireless may be pushing customers toward Android phones rather than the iPhone because it so badly needs to move customers from its overburdened 3G data network to its new and lightly used LTE network. This explains why Verizon is pushing Apple very hard to include LTE in the next iPhone, expected this fall.
Verizon hasn’t been shy about its preferences. It banished the iPhone from its booth at the Consumer Electronics Show because it was displaying only LTE models and I expect it to do the same at the CTIA Wireless show next week.
I argued back in March that Apple should leave LTE out of the iPhone for now because the iPhone does not badly need faster data and the LTE still imposes an unhappy battery life/processing power/size tradeoff. I suspect that reflects the thinking at Apple, which has never been very happy on the bleeding edge of technology.
But I’m not sure that even mighty Apple can resist the pressure it is getting from the most important carrier in its most important market. We’ll know in the fall.