Verizon iPhone 4 to take most of BlackBerry/Droid base despite iPhone 5

Here’s a study that’ll have Apple smiling and Verizon not minding, but fans of the Droid and BlackBerry platforms cringing at the mere thought. The Verizon iPhone 4 is expected to claim the majority of Verizon’s BlackBerry and Droid users by day one of the upcoming Verizon iPhone 4 era. Nevermind day number two, or month number two, or the fact that the Verizon iPhone 5 can be expected in about half a year.

The numbers: a shocking two-thirds of Verizon BlackBerry users say they plan to switch to a Verizon iPhone 4 the day it hits retail stores next week. Slightly less than half of Verizon Droid users plan to do the same on the Verizon iPhone 4's first day.

These day-one iPhone 4 switcher numbers are limited strictly to Verizon’s base, and don’t include users of BlackBerry and Android based phones on other carriers (although they do show a blueprint for what could happen if and when the iPhone finally expands to T-Mobile and Sprint). The kicker is that these numbers, which come from a third party study reported on by PC Magazine, are based on what Verizon’s users plan to do the moment the Verizon iPhone 4 becomes available on February 10th. If two-thirds of Verizon BlackBerry users switch to the Verizon iPhone 4 immediately, as this study claims, how many more will make the move once they see the Verizon iPhone in action? And how many more are waiting to jump ship until the Verizon iPhone 5 arrives later this year? The same thing goes for the nearly half of Verizon’s Droid users who say they plan to change sides immediately. Other studies have shown the Android platform to only have an expected retention percentage in the twenties, and so these latest numbers, which show the Verizon Droid base about to fall by half in short order, come as no surprise – except to those geeks who had mistakenly confused Android sales with Android popularity.

For Verizon, these numbers have to be seen as good news even though they predict a mass exodus from Verizon’s own in-house Droid phone. Better for Verizon to lose its Droid folks to a Verizon iPhone 4 than to an AT&T iPhone 4. For Apple, it’s overwhelmingly good news if the study bears out into reality next week, but also a sign that a Sprint iPhone and a T-Mobile iPhone are needed in order to take advantage of the fact that many or even most BlackBerry and Android users would apparently rather be on an iPhone. This was already overwhelmingly anecdotally obvious, but now there are numbers (at least in survey form) to back it up. And it also means that while there may be hell to pay later when a Verizon iPhone 5 shows up sometime in 2011 and early adopters of the Verizon iPhone 4 are left wondering what happened, the specter of a soon-ish arriving iPhone 5 is clearly not hampering sales of the Verizon iPhone 4 in the mean time. Here’s more on the Verizon iPhone 4.