Verizon iPhone Rumored For Early Next Year

Many readers are submitting coverage from around the Net, all based on a Bloomberg piece quoting two anonymous sources who insist that Verizon Wireless will offer a CDMA iPhone in January 2011. No one at Verizon or Apple would confirm, of course, and no one at AT&T would comment. "The iPhone, which has been the sole domain of rival AT&T in the US since June 2007, will give Verizon a boost in its competition for smartphone customers, UBS AG analyst John Hodulik said in an interview. Verizon customers, who numbered 92.8 million at the end of the first quarter, may buy 3 million iPhones a quarter, he estimates. ... 'Apple is going to dramatically increase the number of devices it sells in the US when exclusivity at AT&T ends,' said Hodulik. ... 'It's hard to ignore the quality issues that AT&T has faced.'"

Comments

Can we shut up about this?

[nine-times]

I suppose I am an Apple "fanboy" and I like hearing interesting Apple news as much as the next guy, but there is no news here.

Steve would never do this...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

But it would be unbelievably hilarious to imagine what would happen if Verizon announced that they would be carrying the iPhone and, once all the eager little pre-orderers had plunked down their US Treasury gift cards, revealed the horrible truth: that the ViPhone had had the same ghastly Verizon software makeover as most of the other phones Verizon sells, unbelievably unintuitive red interface, V-Cast music store, and all.

It would certainly calm fears at AT&T about subscriber loss...

Blame Verizon

[gig]

> 'It's hard to ignore the quality issues that AT&T has faced.'"

Even harder to ignore that Verizon's closed network only runs Verizon phones.

If Verizon is building LTE then that can run iPhone 4G. Can't see a CDMA iPhone at this late stage. It's been end-of-lifed for quite some time. An iPhone 4G launch on Verizon is an event. Verizon and AT&T competing for iPhone users with the same handsets is an event.

different systems

[swschrad]

nothing that will work on the ATT network will work on Verizon. different chipsets, different modulation, different cell-skip algorithms.

so Apple would have to whip up two different phones altogether. they could keep the screen and maybe some of the case parts, but nothing else. they don't do that.

we are entering a new era, in which the 4G systems are going to be more similar than different. now, it makes sense for Apple to span multiple 4G systems, as you just fork the software left or right at boot, and twiddle some tables. note the rumored verIphone will only work in the 4G realm, which will be 1/5 of the network or so in January, but the whole thing by the 2012/2013 boundary.

Re:different systems

[Lars T.]

Yes, but its Apple, look at Motorola which pretty much shipped 4 versions of the Razor phone for each of the major carriers, just add some drivers to iOS and divide manufacturing between CDMA and GSM iPhones, for a company as large as Apple, its not too huge of a feat. For a tiny community driven company, yes, for a major hardware vendor like Apple? Its easy.

Why do something as easy as ship 4 different phones for the 4 major US carriers, when they can do something as complicated as ship one phone that works with at least one provider in just about every place on earth.

Re:small impact, android will trump

[Arthur Grumbine]

And for those of us not attempting to take professional photography with our cell phones, and those who don't feel the "magic" of pixel density, and those who want to make video calls while not connected to Wifi, and those who don't have vegetarian-starved thin fingers with which to manipulate a tiny (but immaculately crisp, no doubt) onscreen keyboard, and those who want to use, and wirelessly share, a 7-10 Mbps data connection, all while paying less per month - there's the EVO 4G.