Verizon shoots self in foot

Verizon Wireless will be releasing its own App Store shortly, and will be forcing any phone manufacturer to only feature the Verizon store on the phones it sells through Verizon. This move is unprecedented and very stupid.

There are currently a few big players in the App store market:

Apple - by far the largest

Blackberry

Google (via Android)

Palm

Currently 3 of these 4 only sell phones on one US carrier, with Blackberry selling on all US carriers. Verizon has basically taken away from its customers the hope of ever being able to activate an iPhone on their network and run the risk of Blackberry jumping ship.

I understand the business strategy behind this, but I think that Verizon is going completely against the grain and is unlikely to find success.

One thing to note is that customers would still be able to install another App store on the phone, it would just take another manual step that many customers won't know how to do.