Verizon will be offering a lot of smartphones in the upcoming months, in around six months. Verizon's CEO Lowell McAdam revealed plans during a Barclays Capital conference in New York.
He gave a tour of what to expect from Verizon in the upcoming months. Almost every style make and of smartphone is represented RIM, Palm, Motorola and unannounced Android smartphone maker. Apple and the iPhone are of course not mentioned.
"Over the next six months or so, you will see devices like the Palm Pre and the Cousin on our network
from Palm. You will see a second-generation Storm. You will see a new
device we call the Tour from BlackBerry as well. That is an upscale of
any other QWERTY-based devices that we have from BlackBerry today.
You'll see Motorola back into our portfolio. We feel very good about
the progress that the Motorola team has made. And, yes, you're going to
see Android devices as well."
Notice he is more careful in his wording, he said "like" before Palm Pre. Maybe they may not be introducing the Palm Pre exactly just its cousin/sister the the Palm Pixie Eos Castle Mini-Pre or other cute name.
Other interesting information McAdam reported:
- Approximately 41 percent of first-quarter device direct sales were smartphones.
- Verizon is "very encouraged by the kind of uptake" that the carrier's first
netbook. - Verzion is going to move very quickly to deploy LTE with apps ready to go.