Verizon prepares 15 still unannounced phones for release
We got our hands on a document showing the product line of Verizon Wireless for the whole 2007 and there are plenty of new phones in there! There are photos of both already available phones and of ones that are still not announced even by the manufacturer.
Context & Ripple Effects
The leaked roadmap lands six weeks after Verizon COO Jack Plating dismissed Apple's iPhone as 'iWhatever' in a letter to employees, and it shows an unconfirmed 15-device slate still unannounced even by their own makers. The carrier's summer had already established its playbook: LG's Chocolate shipped as a Verizon exclusive, tying differentiated hardware to the EV-DO BroadbandAccess network that July reviews were independently scrutinizing for real-world speeds.
First-order effects
- The document exposes Verizon's 2007 handset cadence ahead of the manufacturer announcements the carrier traditionally controls, weakening the gatekeeping position it exercised with exclusives like the Chocolate.
- LG and the other suppliers on the slate now have unreleased hardware in public circulation before their own launch events, compressing their reveal timing.
Second-order effects
- If the slate confirms a broad exclusive-hardware push, Verizon's rivals are pushed to answer with locked-in lineups of their own, making device exclusivity rather than network claims the fall marketing battleground.
- Handset vendors gain leverage from leaked demand signals, since a documented 15-phone carrier commitment shifts pricing conversations toward volume across multiple models at once.
Third-order effects
- The episode points toward carriers, not manufacturers, controlling when handsets become known to the market — and toward roadmap leaks becoming a recurring pressure point that forces carriers to formalize announcement cycles, though how much the leak actually alters Verizon's timing is unknowable from this document alone.
The trend: Post-iPhone-launch, US carriers are competing on pre-committed exclusive handset slates layered over their 3G networks, with internal roadmap documents becoming the leak surface of record.