What does the Verizon iPhone mean for Android?

Unless you are living under a rock or totally not into technology news, you’ve learned that Verizon announced they will carry the iPhone 4 on their CDMA 3G network started Feb 10th of this year, just a littler under one month from now.  That’s all fine for Verizon and Apple, but what does that mean for Android?  Well, there are a few possibilities, and most likely we’ll have to wait and see with this, but here are a few of my takes on this.  

The first thing that I see is more competition.  That’s good and bad.  I can see more competition helping to drive prices lower as manufacturers, between HTC, Motorola, LG etc and Apple, try to get their devices into more hands by possibly lowering prices and I can see carriers fighting a little more to bring new paying customers into two-year agreements on the latest devices.  Knowing how Apple typically has tight control over their product sales, I don’t think we’ll see much of an AT&T versus Verizon price battle with the iPhone, at least with the latest version.  You can currently get a 3GS with AT&T for about $50, a move I’m sure AT&T made in order to lure in customers before that Verizon iPhone was announced.

However, seeing as how the iPhone 4 for Verizon looks to be coming in around the smart phone default price of $200, I’m sure other vendors might be looking to get in a little lower to help market their Android phones a little more on Verizon.  What’s that you say HTC?  A $175 price point for the Thunderbolt?  See how that can work?

There is some bad that will inevitably happen.  The iPhone will pull some of the smart phone buyers, looking to use Verizon’s service from the Android crowd.  However, considering the shear number of Android devices and variety of choices for the consumer, whether they want to top of the line, mid-level or even entry level smart phone, Android should be in good shape for a while.  Let’s see how many users Verizon’s 3G iPhone 4 will lure, knowing there will be a number of LTE Android devices ready for the consumers soon.  It might be a little more of a dramatic change if and when a 4G (LTE) iPhone is available for Verizon.