For those of you who subscribe to our monthly Insights report, you are in store for some cool little nuggets of intelligence and insight when will distribute the June '07 report next week. The June '07 Report focuses on an in-depth analysis of the soon to be released iPhone from awareness to purchase intent to general attitudes and feelings about all things wireless. In anticipation of the wireless device release of the year, rival carriers are not exactly resting on their laurels, and instead several, including Verizon Wireless are launching new strategic offerings that will ideally add some new value to their offerings for consumers. Word is out today that Verizon Wireless, the number two cell phone carrier nationally, but number one among teens and college students, has just announced plans that it will offer a free download of Prince's new single called "Guitar" to its VCast customers. I'm sure this will be the first of many steps carriers will take as the iPhone nears market release later this month. What I found most promising reading the piece was that Verizon Wireless research showed (and ended up confirming our own) that 95% of downloaded songs for wireless devices came from "over-the-air" services like VCast as opposed to being connected to the PC and then transferring over to the wireless device. Certainly this trend bodes well for Verizon Wireless as it continues to add to its mobile music library of 1.9 million songs. As the year progresses though, I look for Verizon Wireless to introduce a new device that will be directly competitive to the iPhone, currently they do not have anything in their portfolio of handsets that fall under that category as iPhone killer, but hey, the year is only half over.
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