It seems that the consensus regarding this announcement is that Verizon is finally getting the iPhone. I have to agree that this makes sense. There is just too much money to be made not to spread the iPhone to additional carriers. I'm kind of surprised it took this long but the entanglement of corporate politics may be to blame for the delay. Then again there may be another reason and this brings me to the second part of my prediction. Verizon is hot on LTE right now as they just announced a line of LTE devices at CES. Their focus on LTE and the delay of this launch makes me think that they are going to open with an LTE iPhone out of the gate. This would be a great way to put a choke hole on the industry and put Verizon in a great position for dominance over the next few years.
If the final verdict is indeed a Verizon iPhone I will then have to decide whether or not to switch from Android to the iPhone. I believe that my decision will be to switch but the decision is not as clear cut as it once was. There was a time when I wouldn't have thought twice but the are aspects of Android that I would definitely miss. If I do switch I will try to write an entry discussing my reasoning. If I decide not to I will try to do the same.
We will just have to see if Apple has waited too long and allowed Android to gain to much of a foothold in the industry to take the market share they want. My hope is that the current climate encourages as much competition as possible. In that scenario the winner is the consumer. I'll keep my fingers crossed for that outcome.
