Verizon to make Windows Phone its next big platform

Remember earlier this year when Verizon dissed Windows Phone handsets for not having LTE? Well, it seems the largest wireless provider in the United States has changed its tune, to an extent. See, most reporters already knew Big Red was looking forward to offering Windows Phone 8 devices, but what we didn’t know was the company’s plans to go all in on the new operating system. Verizon’s CFO Fran Shammo in an interview after the company’s earnings call said, “We’re really looking at the Windows Phone 8.0 platform because that’s a differentiator. We’re working with Microsoft on it.” This echoes the same kind of approach that AT&T had taken with Microsoft when launching the Nokia Lumia 900. Shammo also said that Verizon Wireless expects to have phones based on Apollo 8 (WP8) in time for the 2012 end of year holiday shopping season, and how Verizon could play a similar role with Microsoft as it did with Google’s Android. Hmm … I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Windows Phone 8 will blow up just like Android did in the dawn of the Droid era. To be fair, if there was anyone who could boost the popularity of Windows Phone it would be Verizon, but time will tell whether that kind of lightening strikes twice.