“Verizon is preparing a secret weapon for the escalating handset wars,” Scott Moritz reports for TheStreet.com. “Just a month before Apple’s iPhone is due to juice AT&T’s growth, industry watchers say New York-based Verizon has some hand candy of its own to sweeten sales.”
“‘They are working on an answer to the iPhone that is supposed to be pretty good,’ says one telecom expert who is familiar with Verizon’s effort,” Moritz reports.
“Verizon’s anti-iPhone is LG’s Prada. The Prada, or KE 850, was recently introduced in England and is very similar in appearance to the iPhone,” Moritz reports.
Moritz reports, “In reaction to all the iPhone attention AT&T is getting, Verizon COO Denny Strigl told USAToday Tuesday: ‘We do have a very good response in the mill. You’ll see that from us in the late summer.’
Moritz reports, “A Verizon representative played down the notion that the company was banking on the Prada as its answer to the iPhone. ‘We have several music devices coming’ including the LG Prada, ‘but there are others,’ the representative said.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacVicta” for the heads up.]
“Very similar in appearance…” You gotta love it. If the best Verizon can come up with is the LG Prada and some nebulous, dubious vapor, they’re doomed. This ill-advised, playground-inspired business practice of pretending you have something when you have nothing just before your date with the steamroller always reeks of desperation. Pack the golden parachute carefully, Denny, it sounds like you’re gonna need it.
“Remember the old Ford Granada commercials: “Looks like a Mercedes…” First of all they didn’t, but more importantly it wasn’t the looks that made a Mercedez a Mercedez and a Ford Granada a Ford Granada”
and now that ford owns Jag, the Jags still look like Jags, but run like Fords…..
thus the reason MS can’t buy their way into the search biz.
…and the reason Apple will make an incredible phone.
“…they’re doomed.” — Hey, didn’t they say that about Apple in the 90s? Yeah, right, Verizon is just going to fade away despite being ranked at or near the top of Consumer Reports for the last several years. I don’t like my LG phone that much either but I use Verizon because the service works where I work and play. And for me, the iPhone isn’t what I was hoping for by a long shot. Too big, too much geek, too expensive. I was looking for a bitchen little phone along the lines of a Nano that could slip discreetly into a shirt pocket. Instead, Apple is giving us a phone that out-dorks a pocket protector and says “hey, look at me, I’m using an iPhone! And I just pee’d myself!”
@ pyeman
Re: Unresponsive UI
I’ve noticed that on some of the videos I’ve seen. It looks like they are trying to *emulate* multi-touch and doing it badly. I saw that one guy demoing it had a hard time making the scroll bars work, but I haven’t touched one myself. Are they very popular on that side of the pond yet, or more (as I suspect) a fashion phone?
“First just cause the iPhone is great does not mean Verizon is a bad company. In most cities Verizon is the best cell phone company. One person I do tech support for is a cell tower tech who goes all around the country fixing them and he says Verizon has the most towers that cover the most area in the major cities hands down.” —Apple Employee
Nevertheless, Verizon is most definitely a “bad company.” Their customer service is frequently infuriating and dropped calls are a daily fact of life even here in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the largest urban markets. However, AT&T appears to be no better. In fact, the entire cell phone industry has the dubious distinction of being one of the most complained-about types of businesses in the U.S. What to do?
I wonder why, if Verizon is a bad company, Apple went to them first?
@Figurative
Damn good point apple knows Verizon is the best north american cell phone provider and that is why they went to them first. Now that is not to say Cingular is that far behind but they are behind
Yes, I’ve heard that Verizon is the best. Will selling an inferior LG phone be just as good? Hopefully AT&T will feel a need to improve.
Again, I hope that all of this income from the sales and service of an iPhone will be added incentive for AT&T to invest in building more cell towers and improve their support for their paying customers.
alansky, if you’re in the BA the best way to go is Sprint.
Masa: “The Prada looks like iPhone, just like Zune looks like iPod…
Yeah…. sad bulky copy”
No.
Wrong.
Prada phone is no iPhone, but it’s no copy. It was released (or announced) at nearly the exact same time as the iPhone.
So you’re wrong about it being a “copy.”
What about it being “bulky”? Well its SMALLER THAN THE iPHONE.
Wrong again.
What about “sad” ?
Okay, maybe I can give you sad.
Have you all forgotten about the impending Palm upgrade to Linux OS?
Its very possible this super secret phone is the Treo 800p.
MDN Magic Word “carried” — you are all getting too carried away with this. iPhone will not change the planet, just your pathetic lives.
And YES, the network does matter. When your iPhone craps out and can’t get service, I’ll let you borrow my Verizon Treo.
Homerpyle,
Thanks for stopping by to add your troll droppings.
Verizon network sucks too, you apparently haven’t traveled enough to find out. There’s no good networks in this country that are reliable everywhere.
At best, Verizon can be said to be “slightly less crappy” than Cingular/ATT, and that’s rather subjective IMO, and depends where you are.
The iPhone doesn’t need to change the world, but it does need to change the shitty cell phone industry, because they make crappy products. Apparently you’re too used to them to notice, but they suck. If you don’t want an iPhone, I could care less, there’ll be millions of people who do.
And even you using your inferior phone will eventually benefit as every other phone manufacturer is forced to step up their game to compete with Apple, so even your future non iPhone device will be better because of Apple, you ungrateful bastard.
Oh, and you’re welcome.
I really like LG products, they’re feature-cost-quality is very competitive.
With that said, I’m going to buy a iPhone…well, the second release.
What till the iPhone has a problem and Apple is controlling the replacement and fixes, not AT&T as your provider. Its funny no one is looking at issues that will surface with the AT&T network comes into play. SLOW SLOW SLOW