Back during the whole iPhone 4 “antennagate” issue, Apple held a brief press conference to address the concerns about the iPhone 4’s antenna. During the Q&A Steve Jobs said something to the effect of them having an AT&T as well as a Verizon cell tower on the Apple campus. The immediate question that came to mind was “Why the heck would they have a Verizon cell tower on the Apple campus, unless the iPhone is Verizon bound?”.

Sure enough the iPhone is coming to Verizon at long last, and on February 10th Verizon users will rejoice in the joy that is the iPhone.

So with the iPhone now finally being available to the millions of Verizon customers I am going to make the prediction that by the end of the year the iPhone will be the dominant smartphone in the market. Let me tell you why…

1. While the Android is a fine device, it’s establishment has come from a couple of different fields.
– The folks who wanted an iPhone but didn’t want AT&T service, so they settled for
what they could get.

– The folks who like to tweak, hack, customize and modify their smartphone OS
without having to worry about “jailbreaking”.

That first group is an incredibly LARGE group and now that they can get an iPhone on Verizon you’re going to have a lot of converts. Not just internally from Verizon but from T-Mobile and Sprint as well.

2. The iPhone just works, you don’t have to do anything special to it, you connect it, you synch it and voila it works!
– A lot of tech guys will say that you should be able to do whatever you want
with  your OS and hardware. While this is fine for those that understand
computers to their core, the majority of the computer using public just wants
things to work. They want to turn it on, make their calls, text their friends and play Angry Birds.

3. Apps..there’s MILLIONS of them on the iTunes app store.

With a choice of networks, a choice of data plans and the fact that AT&T and Verizon are THE DOMINANT cell carriers it just seems a no brainer.

Now before you say that I am an Android hater, RELAX. I believe the Android is a very good device and yes I have spent some time with it. It’s great if you like being able to tweak settings and making it do all kinds of fancy stuff. But based on how I’ve seen my non-computer savvy friends use it, it’s more than they want or will ever need. Even me as a long time computer user I find that it’s more than I feel like dealing with anymore.

As for the Blackberry. I actually used to be a Crackberry addict. RIM had their chance and failed miserably not just with the touch hardware but the OS and its ability to run apps. As always it’s great for making calls and sending e-mails, but that’s it and I suspect all it will ever be good for.

We’ll see how things are at the end of the year and if I’m wrong I’ll admit it. This though is one tech prediction that I think I’ll nail.