Verizon (VZ) May Team With Google (GOOG) For G-Phone

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Business makes strange bedfellows. Verizon Wireless, a JV between Verizon (VZ) and Vodafone (VOD), is in discussions with Google (GOOG) about distributing phones with the Google handset operating system.

According to The Wall Street Journal a "Google technology partnership might allow the carrier to offer cheaper phones, since Google’s licensing fees for its software and operating system would likely be lower than the industry standard."

Verizon Wireless has over 63 million customers, but it may need a unique product to offset the Apple (AAPL) iPhone which is sold by cellular system rival AT&T (T) Wireless.

The cell subscriber market in the US is not growing as fast as it once was. The three largest wireless providers, which includes Sprint (S), have over 180 million customers. That is approaching the number of adults in the US, and some of the aged cannot use cell phones. Much of the revenue growth over the next decade may come from the wireless contenders taking market share from one another.

Google and Verizon against AT&T and Apple. Steel cage death match. (The loser will probably be Sprint, which is not even in the ring.)

The

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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