Uh-oh, the Verizon iPhone isn’t even out yet and there’s already a backlash, this time from a little further afield than AT&T. The who’s who of Google’s Android fan boys like Fake Steve Jobs author Daniel Lyons, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, and TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington say that even with a potentially more dependable network than AT&T’s, which can be more prone to dropping calls in cities like New York and San Francisco, there’s no way they’re switching over to the iPhone. “If this event had taken place a year ago, I would have said Android was in trouble. Who wants to buy an ersatz iPhone when you can get the real thing?” says Lyons. But in the past year, he argues, Android phones have improved in terms of quality and quantity. Even Verizon, before it got its grubby hands on the iPhone, was pumping Android in order to compete with AT&T’s iPhone juggernaut. Indeed, this weekend, the number of people using phones with Google’s Android platform surpassed the number of people using iPhones. “The big deal,” says Wilson is the fact that Android is free to use as a software and the phones that use it are getting cheaper. “We are going to see a massive shift from ‘dumb phones’ to ‘smart phones’ around the world this year, and iPhone will not be the big beneficiary of that trend.”
Arrington says AT&T iPhone subscribers may switch over, ““if only to actually be able to use their iPhone for actual phone calls,” but Android shouldn’t sweat it. Especially, as Lyons adds, because it can be used on a variety of carriers and handsets (in case an actual keyboard sounds better than buying iPhone gloves to tap out texts in the winter). Says Lyons:
Hear that sushi master Jobs? This is America! If we want our imitation crab and spammy apps market, by God, we’ll have it.
The Verizon iPhone Is Too Late [Daily Beast via Newsweek]
Related: Mythic Verizon iPhone Finally Let Loose Upon the World
