A new report states that Verizon may be looking to sell off screen space belonging to devices by way of pre-installing apps from U.S. brands that are looking to market to new customers. According to the report, Verizon has offered to install marketer apps onto device homescreens at the cost of $1 to $2 per device, meaning that a family plan with 10 devices on it could earn Verizon a minimum of $10 to $20 for that particular account, and that’s just with one single app, as there would likely be potential for Verizon to install multiple apps per device at the listed cost which would ultimately mean more money.
It isn’t exactly clear which brands Verizon Wireless may have already approached about this potential new marketing method, but they have apparently been floating the idea of pre-installing brand apps since 2015, and they’re reportedly only big brands, while also being limited to Verizon’s Android devices. Although it isn’t discussed which brands Verizon has been in contact with on this particular matter, details of the report state that brands they approached last year were that of finance and retail brands. While this might normally cause a little bit of an uproar for existing Verizon customers who might now be worrying that their devices will be laden with apps from particular brands, the terms of the deal would only see the apps from Verizon’s marketed partners pre-installed on newly activated devices that are being activated for the first time.
This means that apps from a retailer for example, would only come pre-installed on a brand new phone that a Verizon subscriber has purchased when they activate a new line of service. Having said all that, there is still a good chance that a move like this could end up causing frustration and discontent with subscribers when they buy and activate new phones. This is a certainly a high risk and high reward stream of revenue for Verizon as it could potentially gain them a hefty profit considering they activate about 10 million new phones each quarter according to the report, but it could also anger customers. If this proved to be successful for Verizon, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it would afford the same success to the brands that are purchasing app installs, as there is no way to know if users would end up opening the apps to use them.