According to a source we believe to be familiar with the matter:
• Verizon held management training for iPhone sales last week
• Verizon had functioning iPhones (LTE-capable) in management hands for the training sessions
• Formal announcement coming right “after christmas”, was
• The formal announcement of the iPhones Verizon debut is coming right after Christmas; “Apparently ATT’s final demand so as to maximize ATT’s Christmas iPhone sales”
• The Verizon iPhone will be immediately available upon formal announcement
• Device has been “100% cooked for quite a while” and already shipping in bulk to Verizon warehouses
• The Verizon iPhone is not being shipped to any 3rd-party retailers in an effort to control leaks
• Verizon agreed to take 100% responsibility for security, so all the devices will be in their hands until the official announcement date, and they will then distribute thru channels in massive manner (hence early stockpiling)
• The new iPhone is an LTE device and that fact – the only “LTE iPhone,” exclusive to Verizon – will be the main marketing theme; i.e. “For the new ‘4G’ (cough) verizon network” that Verizon has already started promoting
• As rollout of LTE not actually widepsread, Verizon iPhone will have multi-band chip backward compatibility with regular CDMA
• iPhone 5 was planned to debut in summer as LTE-only, for all contracted carriers, but the clock is ticking and nobody thinks either Verizon or AT&T can get to critical mass to offer an LTE-only version
• Steve Jobs is said to be upset that carriers cannot seem to get their LTE act together more quickly
• Apple is “helping” U.S. carriers (money?) to build out LTE more quickly
MacDailyNews Note: The above information is from a sole source that we believe to be credible, but should be treated as rumor, since we cannot independently confirm the information at this time.
[UPDATE: 10:20am EDT; Fixed typo, added quoted info to bullet point #4, added quotes to bullet #6]
finally
the sum of those items seems credible
Can we not be allowed to be pleasantly surprised sometimes?
LTE Verizon iPhone? Sorry, but pretty unbelievable. Apple is never hip on adopting new tech like this. 3G was already out years and the first iPhone was edge only. Yeah, it isn’t LTE.
Rumor containing the words “had” and “will be.”
Android and WImP ’07 will be second and third tier players once this is announced. (I should say a “distant” third tier for the Microphoney.)
So this makes me wonder is the new added feature and successor to the iP4 just going to be the addition of 4G/LTE? Aren’t we all getting nicely spoiled by all of this wonderful tech competition? Hee.
I don’t believe it and I don’t care either. Screw Verizon… the M$ of cellphone carriers.
MDN – you guys actually corroborate your “news”? Edward R Murrow would be proud
so do i wait till this summer to get iphone 5 on verizon or do i finally get good reception and buy it now – i hate these important decisions.
Sounds credible to me! (with the possible exception of the date)
Am I the only human who doesn’t know what LTE is?
The last 3 bullets are simply not credible, and so I discount the rest too.
I call bull, LTE? Doubtful. I agree with KSH
1. Missing the holiday window is a huge fail. Either this was something stipulated by ATT in the exclusivity agreement or it renders the “rumor” horseshit.
2. “Verizon agreed to take 100% responsibility for security”. LOL. Now I KNOW this is horseshit. Do you honestly see Apple ceding security to a carrier?
So…..we have an exclusive rumor now??? And this is supposed to hold more water than a non-exclusive rumor???
Now this is what I like to hear. I met guy in a Best Buy back in Sept that told me he worked for Apple. I was looking at iPhones and talking to a sales guy about switching from verizon to get the iPhone. About 20 minutes later this guy approached me by the tv’s and told me this big long story
about the verizon iPhone. At first I
thought the guy was a quack. But
his information seamed a bit to
detailed to be made up. So I decided to wait it out and see if it was good info or not. Now we get this leak from inside verizon. The good news atleast for me, his info matched the info in this article spot on. With one more thing. A release date!
Beowulf,
MDN is rightfully proud for this one. Exclusive rumour means that the source of this rumour came directly to MDN, and no one else.
How reliable this rumour is? That’s another question. The way this rumour is presented makes it sound a bit more believable than previous ones. However, take away the urgency of the presentation, and substance of it is no more believable than the previous ones.
Perhaps I’m too much of a skeptic, but I’ll continue to believe the only currently available information, which is the 5-year exclusivity contract with AT&T, expiring sometime in early 2012.
Let’s see if I’m right. And also, let’s not forget; a rumour about impending Verizon iPhone doesn’t only freeze Android sales; it also freezes iPhone sales on AT&T.
@ Predrag, How do you figure that adding iPhone to Verizon will freeze Android sales? I’m sorry, but there has been little evidence with the exception of rigged polls to suggest this would happen. Android sales are climbing at an exponential rate and iPhone has been little better than flat over the last 3 months.
…”How do you figure that adding iPhone to Verizon will freeze Android sales?”
That’s not my idea. MDN keeps mentioning it in almost every ‘iPhone on Verizon’ story of theirs. I believe the idea is that folks who were ready to get an Android phone because they simply won’t deal with AT&T will now wait for the iPhone, therefore freezing Android sales.
As for the exponential rate, I believe you have confused the two; over the last three months, Android has begun to level off, and iPhone continues to grow. Look up some NPD data out there from a few weeks ago.
…”About 20 minutes later this guy approached me by the tv’s and told me this big long story
about the verizon iPhone.
Two years ago, I walked into a Verizon mobile store (out of curiosity). A salesman approached me and started offering blackberries (Storm was the new thing). I asked for the iPhone and he told me that they don’t have it now, but they’ll have it ‘in April’. April of 2009, mind you.
A Verizon employee wouldn’t be a loyal employee if he didn’t make an effort to thwart a sale to competitor. I’m sure most of them have no problem making up a ‘believable’ story about iPhone’s imminent arrival to Verizon, if they see someone in Best Buy about to switch away from Verizon in order to get an iPhone. Even if they are “off-duty”, just shopping, like everyone else.
“How do you figure that adding iPhone to Verizon will freeze Android sales?”
Have you seen the leaked Verizon data? I have so many friends that have Android on Verizon that will drop it like a hot potato when a iPhone comes out on Verizon it isn’t even funny. When you see an iPhone at Verizon consider frozen Android sales a done deal.
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Folks,
It is a dual mode phone. There is no doubt. I said this months ago. No one listens! I told you this then along with Verizon having their LTE network in place by Nov. 15 ready for deployment by December. The Techs have had their iPhones for quite sometime testing the system.
@WTF – LTE stands for Long term evolution, or basically the next generation of mobile. Frequently called 4G, but really, it’s a massive infrastructure upgrade as well as a new chipset.
More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution
• Device has been “100% cooked for quite a while” and already shipping in bulk to Verizon warehouses
• Verizon agreed to take 100% responsibility for security, so all the devices will be in their hands until the official announcement date, and they will then distribute thru channels in massive manner (hence early stockpiling)
• Apple is “helping” U.S. carriers (money?) to build out LTE more quickly
Sorry, but these 3 bullet points just don’t go with Apple.
There’s just no way it’s been “cooked” for a while. Verizon just has rolled out LTE, so if there is a Verizon iPhone in the works, it’s being tested now.
Apple letting anyone take 100% control of anything is just laughable……. too funny.
I know everyone wants Apple to spend that $50 billion on anything. But, Apple paying to help rollout LTE is the absurd things that I’ve heard in a while.
@ predrag
My point was that the stories from two randomly diferwnt sources seem to by identical. That alone give the story some credibility. And I don’t believe this was a plant put in place to throw off information, as he waited until I was in a less crowded area of the store, and he had three kids with
him. By the way this was at the
Best Buy in Tracy Ca. The date he
gave me was Jan 14th. This goes
well with the original release of
the iPhone as both dates are mid month and most everyone gets paid that day regaurdless of your pay schedule.
MDN: your source is incorrect. Apple will not release an LTE iPhone in 2011. Carriers and chipsets aren’t ready. Besides, this rumor doesn’t pass a basic sniff test. Now all the blog comment experts will consider the VeriziPhone a “FAIL” because it doesn’t include this absurdly rumored feature.