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.

As a Zimbra hosting provider, I often get questions from clients about iPhones. One of the glaring omissions in the iPhone is the lack of any sort of over-the-air syncing capability. I completely understand the need to plug it in to iTunes so it can check for software updates, sync lots of large media files fast, etc. The truth is, though, that calendars and contact, something business people live by, aren’t very big and are easily synced over the air.

A number of blogs, such as this one, have pointed out the fact that .Mac is a natural addition to the iPhone. My thoughts are almost identical to the ones in this post in particular. Putting .Mac on the iPhone allows users to sync their calendars and contacts in real time with their .Mac account, something I would absolutely have to have as a business owner, and part of the reason I do not have an iPhone. Doing this, though, as the poster points out, actually has the potential to create a second halo effect for the Mac itself. Since users could then sync their contacts and calendars with their Macs, the iPhone push would translate readily to a Mac push. Not only that, I GUARANTEE that it would make sales of .Mac accounts skyrocket. Only with the recent updates to .Mac for Leopard have I actually taken a look at .Mac and noted that it wouldn’t be a complete waste of money. With this though, it might become a must have for some users. My wife does have an iPhone, and if this were available, I’d probably purchase a .Mac account for her.

The one final piece that would make this a real contender in the business world is the .Mac iPhone server. Blackberry already makes the Blackberry Buiness Server for keeping your company’s Blackberry crowd in sync with your corporate collaboration system, why not for the iPhone? An on-site iPhone server would allow direct syncing of your employees’ calendars and contacts with their iPhone without having to be tethered to their machines. In addition, for companies like me that do hosted collaboration, being able to plug those iPhones directly into the collaboration suite would be a big win, whether it was with a server I hosted myself or via a contract for .Mac services.

So, Apple, if you’re listening, where is it? Seems like a no-brainer to me.