Verizon To Start Selling iPads On October 28th

The iPad has been a remarkable presence on the market ever since its release date. Every upgrade that has come out since has managed to become a success, making Apple’s most promising product a real trend-setter. Still, once Google’s Android OS started to spread amongst tabs, it became more and more obvious that we were going to have a great battle between Apple devices and Android powered ones and the iPad started to slowly lose ground. With recently released or announced threatening tabs (such as the Samsung Galaxy from Sprint), Apple had to reconsider their exclusivist policy and decided to extend their partnerships with carriers, thus the latest news that Verizon will soon start to sell iPads.

Until now, those wanting to buy an iPad within the US borders only had one carrier to go to, AT&T. With the Galaxy tab announced to be released at practically all the important providers, Apple decided to step up their game and have came to an agreement with Verizon Wireless. Their product will be available in more than 2,000 Verizon stores, starting October 28^th. Still, the device will not be sold as a CDMA one; instead, fans will be able to buy the iPad as a Wi-Fi tab and subscribe for a $20 monthly Android Mobile Hotspot Contract to obtain the full pack. This come as a pretty big surprise, considering that AT&T provides included 3G coverage in the price of the iPad, making it a better rival for the Android products, but this might have come as a direct consequence of the huge success the iPhone has had at AT&T in recent years. If indeed these kind of partnerships have the purpose of bonding manufacturers and carriers, then the obvious next step would be the Verizon iPhone 4G, a very rumored, but yet unconfirmed alliance.

Verizon has also made public the price tags their iPad will be wearing: the 16GB version + MiFi will cost $629.99, the 32GB version + MiFi will be available in exchange for $729.99 and finally, the 64GB one + MiFi will be priced at $829.99. The earlier mentioned $20 contract only includes 1GB of data traffic, so users will most likely have to pay extra for… the extra. It’s kind of annoying to have to get money out of your pocket for every move and click you make, but it looks like this is the only way Apple and Verizon managed to agree on something.

It is going to be interesting to observe how many people who would usually go for an Android tab will opt for the Verizon iPad. It looks like this is just “setting the ground” for future business, such as the Verizon iPhone 4G, but until then Android’s extremely fast expansion may be at least slowed down a notch. This would probably satisfy Apple, as people have become very enthusiastic with Google’s OS lately, especially with the devices that run Froyo.

[via Phandroid]