Verizon Says, "Use our app store, and only our app store."

Recently, Verizon came out and said they were finally getting into this centralized app store business. This is a cool idea for them. Verizon has a lot of reasonably cool feature phones. It would be nice to have apps for them. Some people might like to just have app purchases charged to their bill. But Verizon isn't just talking about feature phones. They say that no smart phones will come with any other app store portal on them.

So BlackBerrys (BlackBerries? whatevs) and WinMo phones won't have their standard OS app stores out of the box. Conceivably, devs could submit their content to Verizon's store as well... but who wants to deal with two approval processes? RIM and Microsoft could figure a way to allow users to install their clients after the fact, but how many people would?

What does this say about a possible iPhone on the big V? It seems like the masses are clamoring for it. AT&Ts exclusivity is up next year, and it's entirely possible that they'll just back a dump truck of money up to 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino. But if not, Verizon might have a shot. However, Apple is so big on their branding that I have a hard time believing they'd even allow a carrier badge on an iPhone, let alone have a carrier change the included apps. Allowing a carrier to remove the App store portal itself, and include its own instead? Unlikely. A lot of app purchases are made from that phone portal. It would be a big risk to let the carrier muscle in on that business. Would Verizon just forget their new rules in order to get an iPhone? They'd be stupid not to.