Incoming Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam appeared on CNBC Friday to talk about his company’s June quarter results, and during the interview he revealed that not even Verizon gets details on Apple’s product iPhone product plans too early in the process.
Mr. McAdam is set to become CEO of Verizon next week, as Ivan Seidenberg leaves the position to become the chairman.
CNBC asked Mr. McAdam to explain where future revenue growth was going to come from for Big Red, asserting that some investors have been concerned about that subject. As part of that line of question, CNBC anchor David Faber asked Mr. Mcadam why customers haven’t been moving to LTE, asking, “Are people unwilling to pay for higher speeds?”
In his response, Mr. McAdam said he believes customers are beginning to make that change, though he didn’t provide any evidence to that effect. One of the big criticisms of LTE so far has been the terrible battery life that LTE devices see because of how they communicate with the network — the bugs haven’t been worked out yet.
Mr. McAdam’s response on the revenue question deflected somewhat to Apple’s iPhone, and he said, “We had assumed that we would see an iPhone early in the summertime, as it’s been usually, and that’s going to be a little bit later in the year now.”
He added, “But we’ve replaced that with very strong LTE device growth. Nobody thought we would have LTE devices — we have nine of them in the marketplace now. We have a very strong lineup for the 4th quarter.”
CNBC’s David Simon asked directly if Verizon’s customer base increased as a direct result of the iPhone, and if customers at this point wanted 3G or 4G phones, or if it simply, “doesn’t matter because it’s the iPhone?”
While it was a great question, Mr. McAdam’s response was complete corporate non-speak: He said that 4G was great for some things, but that the company’s 3G portfolio was strong.
You can watch the interview for yourself in the video below.
CNBC Video