Apple and Verizon in iPhone Negotiations for 2010?
This makes little sense to me, for several reasons:
- Tim Cook just said they’re happy with AT&T (although we’ve seen Apple do a drastic about-face before; iPhone I’m looking at you)
- The iPhone, as widely acknowledged even by mainstream media, is GSM
- Verizon is CDMA
Yes, everyone (including Verizon) is moving to a compatible 4G technology called LTE, but even if that were to start happening in 2010 as news media is reporting, I understand that to be more than just a software update on all of their equipment. Thus, if we take my understanding/assumption to be true, they’ll need to update all of their towers with new equipment, thus eliminating the one major draw of Verizon: their ubiquitous network. This 4G iPhone will only be able to use their updated towers, not the entire Verizon coverage area AT&T users are lusting after.
I also don’t see Apple doing a CDMA phone, as that would be limited only to the US (and only Sprint/Verizon I believe). Why not continue making things on GSM/LTE which are available to the whole world? Moreover, Apple doesn’t seem to be keen on having more hardware configurations than absolutely necessary—clones, I’m looking at you now.
