Better to be safe than sorry, I guess?

Quite a surprising statement considering the company is spending quite a bit of money putting down Apple in its “Droid Does” ads that we’ve all been getting peppered with for the past two months plus. But in a way it’s not because Verizon has watched as AT&T’s network problems have become a serious liability to the company, “Operation Chokehold” notwithstanding.

“Absolutely, I think we could handle it,” Verizon Wireless CTO Anthony Melone told BusinessWeek in an interview. Now, lets not get the story twisted here: Melone is not saying there is any deal yet, but its pretty much common knowledge that the two sides have at least discussed possible partnerships in the past.

Verizon has gone the opposite way of AT&T over the past several years in investing in network infrastructure, spending about $19 billion on the network itself over the past three years. As Gizmodo points out, AT&T’s spending since the iPhone launch on the network itself has actually decreased.

With Verizon readily talking about it’s iPhone readiness, I wonder if T-Mobile USA will start making overtures as well. The carrier has been mentioned much more often recently as a logical next carrier for the device, as it would take minimal changes (adding TMUS’ 1700MHz band to the 3G chip of the iPhone) for it to work.

Going to Verizon — and CDMA — requires a much more involved rework of the device. Going to be an interesting 2010 in iPhoneland, that’s for sure.

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Um, read the story, and you’ll find it presents no evidence that Apple is contemplating a T-Mobile deal. All you get is an analyst speculating that Verizon isn’t going to get the iPhone soon, and speculating that if Apple wants to end AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity it might logically cut a deal with T-Mobile. But it’s all guesswork.

The analyst says that he expects that a Verizon iPhone will appear only in 2011, and that it’ll use a 4G LTE data connection rather than Verizon’s current EVDO network. Sounds logical enough. If you assume that Verizon’s current spree of iPhone bashing means it’s not going to announce an Apple deal immediately, it feels more and more likely that Apple and Verizon will skip the dead-end technology an EVDO iPhone would bring and jump directly to an LTE model. And it’s going to be 2011 before an LTE iPhone makes sense.

Or so I think. I cheerfully concede that I could be wrong. Which is why this post isn’t titled “No Verizon iPhone Until 2011…”

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Unlike Verizon and AT&T’s own salvos so far, Apple’s are snark-free. (I’m not sure if there’s any secret explanation, but Apple’s Mac ads are about 90% snark and its iPhone ones are relentlessly upbeat.) The new iPhone spots just point out an excellent feature of the AT&T network that’s easy to miss unless you know it’s there: You can make a call and use the Internet at the same time. Which I do frequently, and which I’d miss if I switched to Verizon…

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Droid is $199 on a two-year contract after a $100 rebate, which is pretty much the price it needs to be to be competitive with the iPhone 3GS.

Here’s a video from Google on Android 2.0, which looks like it’ll be a significant advance on the nice-but-sorta-spartan first version of the OS:

I haven’t seen a Droid in the flesh yet, but early buzz on the phone is exceptional. The only truly great next-generation smartphones to come along so far are the iPhone and the Palm Pre; on paper, at least, it sounds like there’s a chance the Droid will join them.

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I’ve grown reasonably adept with the iPhone’s keyboard, but still find physical QWERTY desirable–I’m still looking for a smartphone with input as good as what I had on my Psion Series 5 more than a decade ago, and I’ve said that my ideal phone might be a Palm Pre that ran the iPhone OS. Also, the one thing that almost nobody remembers about on-screen keyboards is that they take up space; the iPhone will never be a top-notch pocketable word processor, because you can only see a little bit of your document as you type. Phones with physical keyboards can devote all their pixels to information rather than virtual keys.

Boy Genius says they like the Droid’s keyboard, and while it’s impossible to judge a tiny keyboard based on a photo alone, there’s nothing about the first views of the Droid’s keyboard that’s alarming. It could be good…

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It’s an entertainingly combative ad, and a pretty effective one given that it doesn’t even show the phone (which apparently looks like this). Of course, the fact that the Droid beats the iPhone on a number of spec- and feature-related fronts doesn’t make it a breakthrough. It’s quite common for smartphones to theoretically trump the iPhone in multiple ways, but the iPhone’s level of hardware/software/service integration and the vast quantity of available apps remain unique. No other phone is going to catch up with the iPhone’s software catalog anytime soon, so if I were an Apple competitor, I’d concentrate on trying to vaunt into the same league in terms of integration. Not that that’ll be easy. The Droid arrives next month, so we won’t have to wait long to judge it.

The other interesting question about the Droid commercial is this: Does all its cheeky iPhone-bashing signal that Verizon has no plans to sell the iPhone anytime soon? It not only mocks the phone but mocks Apple in a way that suggests that it doesn’t plan to go into business with it, despite rumors. I took the implied message of the ad as being something like this: “Yes, we know that a lot of people want a Verizon iPhone, but hold on–we’re going to have a smartphone that’s better than an iPhone.”

(Then again, I’m fascinated by this Verizon ad that says a non-Verizon BlackBerry is a paperweight–it might be an effective ad, but it seems like an odd thing to do to BlackBerry maker and Verizon partner RIM.)

Anyhow, here’s the “iDon’t” ad:

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Assuming that iLounge is right that there will be an Apple tablet with built-in 3G networking, there’s an eleventh detail it’s not reporting: The wireless carrier that will sell the device. You gotta think that it’s going to be AT&T or Verizon–and there have been rumors for months about Verizon selling a tablet from Apple.

The part about the delay between announcement and shipment also sounds logical: Beyond any issues with wireless certification, wouldn’t Apple want to give the developers of those tens of thousands of iPhone OS apps a bit of time to make tablet-ready versions so the gizmo ships with a library of software already in place?

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Barnes and Noble’s e-bookstore would be used to supply the device with content, the companies said.

Verizon stands to benefit from this new device as it would receive a portion of the revenue to pay for the use of bandwidth by these devices over the network. Best Buy benefits from a device that is a direct revenue stream for them: the company is so serious about e-readers that it is specifically training its associates on how to sell the devices.

The two companies may be getting on the bandwagon at the right time. After only selling around a million of these devices in 2008, over five million are expected to be sold this year according to research firm iSuppli. Much of this increase has to do with the success of the Kindle, which has continued to sell very well by all accounts.

Regardless, the issue of price still looms large. As we reported here on Technologizer at the beginning of this month, e-readers are still too expensive for most consumers. At $400, iRex’s new reader seems to be more than twice what consumers would consider paying for a device.

These companies still need to address this issue if they plan to continue growing sales of these devices well into the future.

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I can’t remember if I’ve told this story on Technologizer before, but I recently decided that the time was right for me to get rid of my landline and go with my cell phone full time (supplemented from time to time by Skype). After all, weeks go by when I don’t use my Comcast landline at all, and most of my incoming calls are wrong numbers or debt collectors looking for someone who apparently had the number before me. (I don’t ever give it out–in part because I can’t remember it.)

But when I called Comcast to cancel, the rep had news for me: The “triple play” bundle I subscribed to was such a fabulous deal that canceling the phone portion would…increase my monthly bill by four bucks. I’m still figuring out exactly how to respond to that, but for the moment I remain a landline subscriber and am trying to use it more to keep my AT&T minutes under control.

Anyhow, this is all leading up to a T-Poll (I did a similar one a few months ago, but I think things are shifting so rapidly that the results might be different this time):

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TiVo’s quarterly call

Unlike TiVo’s successful David v Goliath battle with DISH/EchoStar (SATS), things may play out a bit differently this time. First, there’s likely no smoking gun. Based on the evidence presented, it sounds like DISH may have helped themselves to an early TiVo prototype which was subsequently reverse engineered. Second, digital video recording technology may not be as patentable as TiVo would like. (Not to mention, it’s possible Judge Folsom and the Eastern District Court could run out of patience with TiVo’s community stunts and their own nationwide reputation. Then again, maybe not – these cases keep them in the spotlight and are good for the local economy.) Lastly, given the language in yesterday’s call, TiVo may just be looking to force AT&T and Verizon into some sort of licensing deal.

Another difference this time around, is that the defendants are relying heavily on third party tech. Verizon has constructed their own FiOS TV DVR software, but currently runs on Motorola hardware. AT&T’s set-top box platform is also Motorola, but the U-Verse software is largely Microsoft (MSFT). So it’ll be interesting to see how Moto and Mister Softee, plus others such as Broadcom, could be pulled into the fray. As an observer, and given TiVo’s pressure to license, I hope their contracts with DirecTV (DTV) and Comcast (CMCSA) are called into evidence.

My blogging partner Davis Freeberg has tracked down and purchased the PACER court filings so you don’t have to. Verizon here. AT&T here and below:

(Photo by Zandir; this post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

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