Verizon Embraces Google's Android
How Verizon Wireless learned to stop worrying and love open access. Step one: Realizing it's a way to add low-cost customers — In yet another sudden shift, Verizon Wireless plans to support Google's (GOOG) new software platform for cell phones and other mobile devices.
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon's Android embrace is the third beat in a fast reversal. Reuters reported Google–Verizon talks at the end of October; in late November the carrier pledged to open its network to outside devices, a move GigaOM and the NYT's Bits blog both treated skeptically (GigaOM asked what the openness actually means, while Bits argued the real move to openness was narrower than the rhetoric). On December 4, Business Week supplies the concrete payoff: Verizon Wireless will support Google's Android software platform.
The framing matters as much as the fact. Business Week casts open access not as ideology but as customer acquisition — a way to add low-cost customers — and GigaOM's syndicated take ('Harsh Reality Of Verizon's Open Network') reads the same shift as reluctant necessity rather than conversion. Either way, the carrier that most famously ran a closed, carrier-controlled device model is now inviting an outside OS onto its network.
First-order effects
- Verizon Wireless gets a ready-made smartphone software stack without funding its own, positioning Android handsets as a low-cost channel for adding subscribers.
- Google converts weeks of reported talks into confirmed national-carrier distribution for Android, giving the platform a US carrier footprint rather than relying on handset-maker partnerships alone.
Second-order effects
- Rival US carriers must now choose between matching Android support or defending proprietary platforms and the walled-garden content revenue that depends on controlling the device — the exclusivity economics of carrier-branded services come under direct pressure.
- Handset vendors selling into Verizon gain an OS alternative to carrier-specified software, shifting negotiating leverage toward whoever owns the software layer rather than the distribution contract.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US carrier gatekeeping becomes contestable: networks compete on price and coverage while value migrates up to the OS and services layer — exactly the structural question analysts raised when Verizon first announced its open-network plan.
The trend: US wireless is moving from carrier-controlled walled gardens toward open operating systems, with Google trading software reach for carrier distribution and carriers trading control for subscriber growth.