Verizon IPhone Arrival Unconfirmed

Rumors are flying about a the second coming of the iPhone, this time to Big Red. There's no proof, and until the super spies at Engadget publish another email from the obviously poorly secured Verizon corporate email system with a photo of Steve Jobs and Ivan Seidenberg tearfully hugging each other you shouldn't get your hopes up.

An iPhone on the Verizon network would be lovely for many die hard Apple fans, and might even take some momentum out of the Motorola Droid that's been nipping at the iPhone's heels. Face it, the exclusive AT&T iPhone deal is obviously the only reason a lot of folks are sticking with the carrier.

Every day that the iPhone doesn't show up in Verizon stores is a day of lost competition and less consumer choice. If you love Verizon and want iPhone-like functionality, you're best bet is to go with the Droid. And the Droid may make you forget all about the iPhone soon. With the new Android 2.1 OS upgrade hitting the Motorola Droid this weekend (Engadget launched that story yesterday with yet another of their mysterious acquisition of a Verizon internal email) a number of functions that it previously missed in comparison to the iPhone (like pinch to zoom) will be implemented.

With Android market share snapping its jaws at the heels of the iPhone, Apple needs to get the iPhone out to other carriers before it becomes irrelevant. The application base for Android is growing like "The Blob" and there's no stopping it. The only way to compete is via clever marketing and making it more available to consumers.

Many current Droid owners may have been down to a coin flip if Verizon had an iPhone available when they launched the Motorola/Google wonder-gadget. After all, the iPhone is time tested and proven, with a solid proprietary operating system and massive application development community. Yet the rate of Android proliferation is astounding, and Android based phone sales will soon surpass the iPhone if they haven't already.

On the other hand, if AT&T had the Droid in it's product line-up, how many iPhone users would be toting an open source Motorola device today instead?

The rumor mill continues to churn, and amid tales of Nexus One arriving everywhere and Blackberrys being available at practically every carrier in the nation, there is still a great deal of consumer freedom in the wild. But these are the heavy weights, and the exclusive agreements with AT&T and Verizon are simply prolonging the demise of one or the other.

An argument can be made that if the iPhone had never been exclusively offered and packaged only with AT&T no one would have bothered to develop the Droid. With a huge crowd of eager consumers stuck in Verizon two-year contracts there was a willing captive market for the Motorola A885.

Regardless, the time has come for an even and fair fight. The ring is set up at Big Red. One contender is in its corner. Now we just have to see if anyone is going to allow Apple to escort the iPhone into the cage.