Verizon drops pricing on almost all existing smartphones to under $99
Well, hear us out. We've had a flurry of tips sent in today that Verizon Wireless has dropped the prices of almost all existing smartphones they offer to only $99 with a two-year agreement.
Context & Ripple Effects
In mid-July Verizon confirmed it cut the BlackBerry Storm to $99 specifically to counter AT&T's iPhone 3G — a single-model price strike aimed at the hottest device on the market. Today's report, built on a flurry of reader tips to Boy Genius Report rather than an official announcement, claims that same $99-with-two-year-agreement pricing now covers almost the entire existing smartphone lineup.
If accurate, the move lands while Apple and Verizon are themselves the subject of unconfirmed reports about talks over iPhone-like handhelds, making a cheap, broad smartphone portfolio a way for Verizon to defend its base regardless of how those negotiations end.
First-order effects
- Nearly every smartphone in Verizon's lineup becomes a $99 entry point on a two-year contract, erasing the price gap that made the Storm a harder sell than AT&T's iPhone 3G.
- Buyers upgrading this quarter get flagship-class hardware at feature-phone prices, with the commitment term — not the sticker — carrying the real cost.
Second-order effects
- AT&T faces a lineup-wide price attack rather than a single-device one, pressuring it to respond on iPhone pricing or bundling rather than relying on exclusivity alone.
- With handset margins compressed across the portfolio, Verizon shifts revenue recovery onto monthly service plans, moving the competitive battleground from shelf price to plan economics.
Third-order effects
- If sub-$99 becomes the standard smartphone entry point across carriers' lineups, US operators complete the shift to treating handsets as subsidized loss leaders locked to two-year agreements, with differentiation concentrated in network quality and plan structure rather than device pricing.
The trend: US carriers are converging on the $99 subsidized smartphone as the default entry point, competing on contract economics instead of device price.