“Guggenheim Securities’s Shing Yin this morning contemplates the question of why Apple has not produced a version of its iPhone running the faster 4G ‘Long Term Evolution,’ or LTE, cellular networking standard,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.

“As Yin points out, many think Verizon is at a disadvantage because AT&T’s non-LTE, ‘GSM’ version of the iPhone ‘actually runs faster on AT&T’s HSPA+ network than on Verizon’s EV-DO network,’” Ray reports. “Yin writes Verizon seems to be happy with this situation, because the LTE phones it does have, running Google’s ‘Android’ operating system, are cheaper to sell to customers than are the heavily subsidized iPhone.”

We believe Apple may have decided not to release an LTE iPhone last year in part because it did not want to cede any leverage to Verizon, which had the clear lead in LTE deployment. We think Apple preferred to see AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all offer essentially the same iPhone, so that it maximizes the role of the device (rather than the network) in consumers’ purchasing decisions. With AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all expecting to have a reasonable amount of LTE coverage by the end of this year, we think Apple is likely to be more open to offering an LTE iPhone… we would not be surprised to see an LTE iPhone introduced sooner rather than later, perhaps at Apple’s WWDC event in early summer. In our view, an LTE iPhone would likely drive postpaid subsidy expense higher, especially at Verizon. – Guggenheim Securities analyst Shing Yin.

Read more in the full article here.