Sidecut Reports

Like everyone else across the tech universe, I am saddened by the untimely passing of Apple chairman Steve Jobs. My concern for Apple the company is whether or not there is the brainpower, will and chutzpah in Cupertino to finish the revolution Jobs led with the iPhone — the complete destruction of the cellular telephone industry as we knew it.

While we all know the conception, building and launching of the iPhone — and perhaps even more importantly the AppStore — was a team effort at Apple, the complete and radical shift the iPhone and Apple’s open apps strategy brought forth was pure Jobs, a seismic business and lifestyle shift whose aftershocks are still knocking down walls. Witness Sprint’s reported recent capitulation, its decision to “bet the company” on a ginormous cash commitment to Apple — simply to get access to Steve’s wonderful toy.

If you can remember that far back, before the iPhone cellular carriers were in complete control of the on-phone experience — and your inability to remember anything innovative before the BlackBerry should be a sign that the folks who build the networks shouldn’t necessarily be in the business of determing what should run atop them. If you leave aside for a moment the allure of the spectacular device, the bigger power shift that Jobs and Apple brought with the iPhone was the democratization of the mobile app, the idea that anyone could try to build something fun or useful and that there would be a place to give it a try without having to convince a bunch of suits in some telecom-company conference room beforehand.

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Lost a little bit in the heated run-up to next week’s highly anticipated introduction of (maybe!) the next model iPhone from Apple is the big question: How exactly are the three major cellular carriers in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint, going to balance their “4G” network promotions with a phone that will probably be called the iPhone 5? Which will, as most expect, not even run on a 4G network but on a 3G one to boot?

Our guess — they will ignore the comparisons completely, and continue to push the 4G term in marketing while selling iPhones as fast as they can. While Verizon and AT&T already are doing this dance, you can put Sprint into this equation too, should Big Yeller finally get the iPhone in its stores as is also rumored. So far this year it seems like consumers literally aren’t buying the carriers’ 4G pitches, as witnessed by Verizon’s last fiscal quarter when Big Red sold just 1.2 million 4G devices but activated 2.3 million iPhones.

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As the tech-reporting world spins another batch of headlines that basically say “keep waiting to hear more about Verizon LTE service pricing,” it’s worthwhile to start guessing what might be the most attractive of Big Red’s 4G LTE pricing, device and plan options. While LTE-powered smartphones like the HTC Thunderbolt (hey wasn’t that supposed to be on the shelves already? Or should we not believe the so-called exclusive confirmations?) might look like a good all-in-one purchase (smartphone, hotspot), what about the possibility of a bundle that includes a LTE standalone mobile hotspot and a Verizon iPhone?

The latter would combine the world’s most popular smartphone platform with theoretically the fastest commercial network in the U.S.; is that more of a draw than an all-in-one Android combination? Especially if the Android phone in question is $250 or $299 as rumored and an iPhone can be had for $200? If the 4G pocketspots are under $100, isn’t the idea of a future-proof 4G connection (the mobile hotspot) and the best-supported smartphone (the iPhone) as compelling as an all-in-one 4G phone with Android?

While we admire the marketing machinery that lets Verizon score headlines for not really saying anything at all about pricing — other than that someday, sometime, it will actually offer LTE services for sale — maybe the coyness is because Verizon knows that once it releases an official set of prices and plans for any one of its forthcoming 10 LTE devices the permutations like the one above will start in real time.