So as the year begins, so starts the rumor mill again, but it seems that this time it has been much more loud than normal. It appears that Apple will be holding some event by Valentines Day and after CES. This is no surprise as they have held their annual MacWorld Expo every year at the end of January. (This year – 26th thru 29th) The rumor is starting up that this WILL BE THE YEAR they announce Verizon as a new provider of the iPhone. The only thing that doesn’t make since, is that AT&T has exclusivity until 2012. It looks as though, be the top selling Jesus Phone that it is, Verizon wants a piece of the iPhone pie and is willing to pay for it. So could 2011 be the year we finally see the iPhone on the Verizon network? Most people seem to stick with the Wall Street Journal report saying that Apple has been preparing CDMA versions of the iPhone (provided by Qualcomm) for quite some time now and will be ready for a 1st quarter launch this year. There is even a crazier rumor that reason why the unicorn white iPhone is being delayed for a Verizon launch. That last one aside, I think this CDMA Verizon rumor is only half true…. and I’ll tell you why.
I’ll bite on the Verizon rumor, AGAIN. Only because it seems viable this time around, but by this time next year, I may be eating my own words on this; but being only one year short of the AT&T contract, and Verizon wants to pay a pretty penny to keep it among the top 2 wireless providers (forgot my source on this one… sorry, but you can look it up), I don’t see why not. So you’ve got me sold on that, but the problem with the CDMA thing I have, is why would Apple put an iPhone on a dying technology? The rest of the world seems to run on GSM of some sort and it has been that way for while. Its almost a world standard at this point. Another reason why I say dying is because since 2001, there have been reports of Verizon wanting to go to GSM, to join the rest of the world. Now the original idea that they were testing was wCDMA (an upgrade from GSM, not CDMA as you might think), but by 2007 it seems they have finally ended up choosing LTE for future proofing their networks. It seems they wanted the crazy fast 100Mbps that was being tested by Nokia to be the next 4G technology. Now Verizon has been switching over to the new LTE technology since 2008, and was finally announced publicly back in October of 2010. By December 1st, Verizon began selling their 4G LTE modems and in the coming weeks, it seems they will begin selling the HTC Thunderbolt and more 4G capable phones.
So you see where I am going with this? Now that they are officially a GSM carrier, and their phones and modems will connect to the network via SIM cards, why would Apple go with CDMA? Especially since Verizon has been preparing for GSM since 2001? I just don’t see it. So I am putting my call out there.. yes we will see a Verizon iPhone by the summer, but I think it will be an LTE “4G” iPhone 4, GSM based instead of CDMA. I think it will be the “Oh and One More Thing…” right after the announcement of the iPad 2.
We shall see…