incrediBILL - 8:44 pm on Dec 27, 2009 (gmt 0)

A lot of that was because users in the U.S. are tied to their carrier

Define tied.

In California it's lack of coverage, not the fee to changing carrier that concerns many.

In my area, Northern California and Sierra/Nevada area, Sprint or Verizon are the two best choices and swapping one for the other is a toss up. On AT&T we lost connection driving to Reno in the high mountains or driving past Reno, not a problem for Sprint or Verizon.

In Southern Califonia, Verizon is the defacto leader in coverage as you go deeper into the desert and mountains so it's virtually the only choice so swapping carriers is kind of a moot point.

Therefore most people in California area (and Nevada) tend to use Verizon by default.

I hear a lot of complaints about signal quality from those that just had to have an iPhone so it's possible some of them might convert now that there's a viable alternative on a network with far superior local coverage.

Don't forget, we had other iPhone-like options like the Blackberry or Palm, they just weren't close enough so we held tight until Android came out.