Amid all the hype around the Verizon iPhone, you may have missed one important change: Verizon (VZ) is ending its popular "New Every Two" upgrade program.
The program offers Verizon subscribers a credit of as much as $100 toward a new phone every two years, SmartMoney reported. As of Jan. 16, the company will no longer offer the credit to new customers and won't re-enroll current customers after their next Every Two upgrade.
Verizon is also toughening up its early upgrade policy.
The changes mean that customers drawn to Verizon by the lure of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 4 will be locked out of the easy upgrade policies, making each customer more profitable for Verizon.
"The longer you can get customers to go between upgrading their phones, the stronger the profitability for the carrier," said Michael Hodel, an equity analyst covering Verizon for Morningstar.
iphone will flop with verizon, they should and need to stick with dorid and push it more.
you cant one week say this is the iphone killer and the next week say we are saved we have the iphone lol
I think the iPhone will do well on Verizon's network which is why they are doing this just to prepare so they don't lose money. It's really a bad business move IMO cause this is one of the reasons many including myself stay with Verizon. I'll look at other options now but still for now unless they really drop the ball on coverage I'll end up staying just cause the coverage is better than anything else.
The only thing that could possibly hurt Verizon iPhone sales right now is the slew of 4G Android phones coming to the market in the next couple of months in conjunction with Verizon's ramping up of its LTE expansion across the country. They're going to be pushing the speed and advantages of the network, ie simultaneous voice and data, in their marketing and the iPhone is 3g on the slower CDMA network. The Motorola Bionic will for sure be my next phone.
PopCulture wrote:How will this help them? People love Verizon because of the numerous options that they offer. Maybe too many people took advantage of them.
What is there to be taken advantage of with this program? You have 2 years, you either get a free upgrade worth up to $50 of you don't. There really isn't anyway to speed up the 2 year time frame that I know of.
