Verizon iPhone 5 is key cog in 2011 Apple wheel whether 4G LTE or not

Even as Apple continues its march toward being an equal opportunity iPhone carrier provider heading into the iPhone 5 era, the iPhone 5 verizon is shaping up to be the key cog in Apple's 2011 iPhone wheel – and that's whether it ends up offering 4G LTE or not. Even as enthusiasts and insiders continue to focus on the issue of whether Apple's fifth generation iPhone will include the proverbial "fourth generation" of cellular networking, bigger concerns prevail. First and foremost is what impact the Verizon iPhone 5 will have on the Verizon customer base when it arrives. Earlier this year the Verizon iPhone 4 had a decent impact, but it arrived at a time when (too) many Verizon customers were well aware that it was an interstitial model, arriving the majority of the way through the iPhone 4 era, offering 2010 technology in a 2011 landscape, and therefore decided to skip it. The iPhone 5, in contrast, will arrive on AT&T and Verizon at the same time and will offer the same features (more or less) to both sides of the fence. And the Verizon side of that fence represents Apple's biggest iPhone growth opportunity yet.

Ahead of the iPhone5, Apple's smartphone dominates the AT&T platform. And even with AT&T's recent attempts to embrace the Android platform in response to losing iPhone exclusivity, that won't change. Outside of technology geeks, no one switches from iPhone to Android on the same carrier. So while all Apple can do on the AT&T side is maintain its dominance amongst AT&T smartphone users and work to convince non-smartphone users on AT&T to make the iPhone 5 apple the first-ever smartphone, the Verizon side is an all out battlefield. The Verizon Droid has had more than a year of warm-up time, and while it's getting buried by iPhone sales, Apple will still need to contend with the fact that so many Verizon customers have already settled onto the Android platform and must now be convinced to "switch" smartphone platforms from Android to iOS rather than simply make the iPhone their first smartphone.

But even with the greater challenge on the Verizon side, it represents Apple's best prospects for continued growth. The lack of an iPhone on Verizon from 2007 to 2010 created an imbalance in which tens of millions of Verizon customers considered the iPhone to be their first choice but weren't willing to move to AT&T to get one. Regardless of which competing phones those Verizon customers have been using in the mean time, the door is still open to convert them to the iPhone they wanted all along – even among those who turned their nose up at the Verizon iPhone 4 for being last year's soon-to-be-discontinued model. And while Apple and AT&T will continue to be deeply entrenched partners for years to come, that partnership went sour years ago. It's the budding partnership between Apple and Verizon which bears watching, whose developments will offer clues to the iPhone's future prospects. Yes, it'll be intriguing to see whether Verizon can indeed pressure Apple into including 4G LTE networking on the iPhone 5g or whether that'll have to wait until the iPhone 6. But in the mean time the real intrigue lies with how this all plays out in terms of the iPhone finally managing to gain the kind of real-world marketshare to match the theoretical popularity it's always had. It's time to watch the Verizon vacuum be filled. Here's more on the iPhone 5 news.