iPhone News Updated

Can you hear me now? Verizon rumored to have CDMA iPhone next year

It appears as if USA Today is now in the iPhone rumor business, alleging that Verizon will be carrying the iPhone as soon as 2010. Unfortunately, neither evidence nor common sense support its claim that Verizon will be selling a CDMA-based iPhone next year, or ever.

A new rumor suggests that largest US mobile carrier, Verizon, is in “high-level” talks with Apple to produce a CDMA-compatible iPhone for its network. However, this rumor flies in the face of recent comments from both Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and Apple COO Tim Cook to the contrary.

USA Today cites “people familiar with the situation” that say the goal is to have the Verizon iPhone model ready to launch next year. As best as anyone outside of Apple and AT&T know, the exclusive contract that AT&T has with Apple does expire some time next year, though some believe that AT&T is looking to extend that deal to 2011.

However, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg told the Wall Street Journal this month that it was more likely that Verizon and Apple would work out a deal when the company moves its network over to the LTE 4G standard, which is based on the GSM standard used by current iPhone models. While Verizon plans to have at least two cities with LTE coverage by the end of this year, its rollout won’t even begin in earnest until 2010.

Not only that, but COO Tim Cook said during Apple’s recent quarterly earnings call that the company is “very happy” with its relationship with AT&T and doesn’t have immediate plans to change that. Further, he also dismissed the idea of making a CDMA-capable iPhone. “From a technology point of view, Verizon is on CDMA, and we chose from the beginning of the iPhone to focus on one phone for the whole world,” Cook said. “When you do that, you really go down the GSM route because CDMA really doesn’t have a life to it after a certain point in time.”

AT&T plans to begin rolling out its own LTE deployment in 2011, though European carriers plan to push back deployments to 2012. While LTE is certainly the future, and you can bet the iPhone will eventually have LTE compatibility, that time is neither now nor next year.

Is Verizon interested in garnering the sort of high-ARPU customers that the iPhone would attract to its network? You bet. Does Apple want a slice of Verizon’s 86 million or so subscribers? Absolutely. Would customers like a choice in carrier when using an iPhone. No question. Is Apple making a CDMA-based iPhone? Magic 8-ball says “Unlikely.”

[Thanks: http://arstechnica.com]

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