You may have seen them, Verizon’s commercials touting their superior 3G coverage and poking fun at Apple’s there’s an app for that iPhone byline. You may have also read various articles on the spectacle that has ensued surrounding these commercials. AT&T is crying foul, and Verizon’s response has basically been that the truth hurts. I have a theory on the real purpose behind these commercials.

It is more than obvious that the Verizon commercials are targeting iPhone users. The phone used in the Island of Misfit Toys commercial very clearly resembles an iPhone, and the tag line of there’s a map for that is very clearly a take on the iPhone tag line there’s an app for that - a tag line that every iPhone user and Apple aficionado knows. So why go after the iPhone? The obvious answer is that the iPhone is the Big Thing™ in smartphones right now. I think there’s more to the story, though.

Verizon has been keen to be able to sell the iPhone, but, as we know, the current editions of the iPhone only work on GSM/EDGE/HSDPA networks. Verizon, as we know, runs incompatible CDMA/EVDO networks. The glimmer of hope that has the rumor mill churning is LTE, or Long Term Evolution. LTE is a 4G technology that promises much greater speeds than the current 3G networks. What’s more, both AT&T and Verizon have begun the process of rolling out LTE. An iPhone with LTE radio technology would be able to run on both AT&T and Verizon networks, allowing Apple to maintain its contract with AT&T while moving past the exclusivity that the iPhone users love to hate.

None of this is new information. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that LTE is not backwards compatible with either technology. If and when Apple does release an LTE version of the iPhone, it must decide what level of backwards compatibility it must attain. For various reasons, it’s pretty well guaranteed that GSM/EDGE/HSDPA will be the only backwards compatibility built in to the device. When you consider Apple’s contract with AT&T and the fact that adding CDMA/EVDO would require extra licensing from Qualcomm and a chip to support it, this starts to make sense. Unfortunately, in the iPhone arena, this will put Verizon at a significant disadvantage. Verizon has promised full LTE coverage by 2013, but, until that time, Verizon customers will be subject to the same spotty coverage issues that plague AT&T 3G users even today.

When you take a step back and look at the Verizon commercials from that light, you may see a marketing strategy emerge. Should an LTE iPhone be in the works and set to arrive on the scene as early as next year, Verizon wants you to remember - when it’s actually true - that they have better high speed data coverage than AT&T. They don’t want you to think about the fact that all LTE networks will be starting fresh, from zero, and that Verizon’s 3G coverage map will mean exactly nil to iPhone users. They want you to remember that nice big red US map with very few holes compared to the comparatively-pale-looking hole-ridden blue US map when you decide which carrier to use.