HTC Thunderbolt Launching Very Shortly

Verizon says that the HTC Thunderbolt should be launching very shortly, while the Verizon iPhone is said to generate dollars.

The HTC Thunderbolt will be launched very shortly, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said during a speech at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecommunications conference. The Thunderbolt is Verizon Wireless' first 4G LTE Android smartphone to hit store shelves, and will give subscribers a taste of what the carrier's tiered pricing structure will look like going forward.

"LTE gives us the capability to price very differently than we priced before. Not just on consumption, but also possibly on speed differentiation. So we are still working through those models. Don't know if we will do something there yet, but wireless is still working through those and that will come out with the HTC launch," Fran Shammo said.

The exact HTC Thunderbolt release date is currently rumored to be March 10 (the latest of many rumored release dates). Verizon Wireless announced earlier this year - via Twitter - that the Thunderbolt would be released earlier than expected. The carrier has also promised to make a 4G LTE Android splash in March. Well, today is March, and it looks like the HTC Thunderbolt will be the 4G LTE Android splash.

The Droid Bionic, Revolution and Stealth V are three other 4G LTE Android smartphones scheduled for release by mid-2011, but we imagine we'll have to wait a few more months for those to arrive. Verizon Wireless is also rumored to release new 3G smartphones soon: the HTC Droid Incredible 2 and HTC Trophy. It looks like it's all set for an HTC splash too on Verizon Wireless this spring.

The Verizon CFO also explained attendees of the Morgan Stanley event that the Verizon iPhone has been successful so far, with more than 60% of sales taking place through the carrier's online store. That's a fairly high number for a company with more than 2,000 retail stores. The Verizon iPhone is also turning feature phone users into smartphone users.

"What we have seen since we launched the iPhone is we are seeing a fairly significant number of feature phone customers migrate to the smartphone," Fran Shammo said. The Verizon CFO believes that tiered data plans will make even more feature phone users migrate to smartphones, and said that the Verizon iPhone will likely get such a structure in place this summer.

"As smartphone prices come down with the competition that is coming from Huawei and others, it is going to push that smartphone price down, which means more and more people will be able to afford it. And we have got to give them an entry point that is sufficient for them to come in. So we are still wrestling what that entry point is, to be honest. If you go back to December, we did trial a $15/150MB plan. It stimulated a lot of activity at the lower end," the Verizon CFO said.

According to Fran Shammo, 67% of Verizon Wireless subscribers are either feature phone or multimedia phone users, where feature phone users have no fixed monthly data traffic fee and multimedia phone users are on a $10/month plan. In other words, as 3G smartphone users move on to 4G smartphones, the aim is basically to get more feature and multimedia phone users upgraded to 3G smartphones.

Posted in: HTC