“The device will be available to customers in January, according to the people, who declined to be named because the information isn’t public,” Thomson reports. “The iPhone, which has been the sole domain of rival AT&T in the U.S. since June 2007, will give Verizon a boost in its competition for smartphone customers, UBS AG analyst John Hodulik said in an interview. Verizon customers, who numbered 92.8 million at the end of the first quarter, may buy 3 million iPhones a quarter, he estimates.”
MacDailyNews Take: They’ll buy more than that; if anything to make up for the 6 months of their market being frozen – a freeze that starts right now. 
Jim Goldman has already reported this info on CNBC. And now it’s on MarketWatch and Reuters… It’ll be all over very soon; this news and Google’s Android U.S. growth. Treat this one as more than just a rumor (let’s just say that a little birdie told us so).
Thomson reports, “‘The fact is, Apple is going to dramatically increase the number of devices it sells in the U.S. when exclusivity at AT&T ends,’ said Hodulik, who is based in New York and rates Verizon shares ‘neutral.’ ‘It’s hard to ignore the quality issues that AT&T has faced.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Droid does sit on shelves while Verizon Wireless customers wait for The Real Thing.
Thomson reports, “Verizon Wireless, which is building a high-speed fourth- generation network, plans to unveil a number of devices that will run on the new technology in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam has said.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Adidos, Android phones. The inferior derivative knockoff won’t “win” this time.
How can we confirm this news?
Will it be “4G” or CDMA and Apple will be forced to make two style phones anyway.
And if they have to make two iPhone makes/models, what’s wrong with three or four for T-Mo and Sprint and nTelos?…
Disagree MDN, Android is a capable competitor and I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon.
“…according to the people”
Oh, THEM again?
You’re wrong, Chaz! Where’s the meatloaf? MOM!
Now the iPhone will be on the saintly, customers-are-always-first, über high tech, all-your-dreams-come-will-come-true network! No more of that ordinary telco ATT.
There are three reasons I hope this is true.
1) Relieve ATT’s network of some congestion
3) Show that Verizon cannot handle the iPhone any better than ATT
3) End all the gall-dern stories like this one….
BTW, did I share this yet?
i am hearing that this rumor is NOT true, just my 2 cents
@chaz,
Android’s biggest “capability” is being available on Verizon, where tens of millions of the most loyal wireless customers can’t get access to an iPhone without leaving their network. It’s easy to see that Android would’ve barely left the ground by now if Verizon hadn’t invested millions of dollars in advertising Android, positioning the platform as their main iPhone competitor.
If the iPhone comes to Verizon, watch how quickly Android’s growth in America comes to a crawl. Assuming there won’t be a T-Mobile/Sprint iPhone, those will be the only two places where the likes of Android and BlackBerry can hide without true competition.
In my opinion, just rumors being floated to freeze iPhone sales.
gonna freeze att sales as well mdn…
I’m sure this Verizon rumor will turn out to be the true one. All the other analyst predictions fell flat, but this one will be on target, you’ll see!
“iPhone Coming to Verizon” is beginning to enter the realm of “End of World Coming — Repent!”
——RM
Android will not go away or “lose”. Why? Because all the cell phone manufacturers have no place else to go. They can’t license iOS or Blackberry OS. Windows 6.x, Symbian and the rest are jokes. Windows Phone 7 (or whatever name they give it next – got to keep those marketing boys employed!) is still vaporware and 4 years behind. So HTC, Motorola, Samsung and all those phone makers have no real option but to support Android. And those other manufacturers love Android for another reason. It’s Free!! Right now, the fight is Google v. Microsoft, and the fight is not pretty. How is Microsoft going to rescue its market share it has been losing to Android? Good luck with that. However, the day is coming that the two dominate systems will be Apple and Android. Will the Mac v. PC war repeat itself? Time will tell. I’m betting on Apple. This time Apple has better leadership.
will you be able to talk and do web browsing at the same time on Verizon?
1. Where are the phones? Who’s making them?
2. If iPhone 4 is any indication, how are Apple’s suppliers going to meet the demand of double the production? Unless this planning have been flying under the radar and passed all the sniffing by al the analysts.
3. Who does this kind of rumor really serve? Verizon, who can put more pressure on Google and its partners, or ATT, who can sit and watch ever more Verizon customers hold out from buying new phones until the iPhone is available?
I suspect that if this true, then the iPhone 4 will debut on the Verizon’s new 4th generation LTE network and not the aging and lacking in sustainability CDMA network. In this way Apple would only need to build an LTE radio iPhone 4 which would be backward compatible with the GSM 3G network of AT&T;. I do hope that would be roadmap for Apple, as this would have sales increase even further and reach a wider customer base, as is the case in the United Kingdom and soon to be the case in Canada.
MDN thank you for the correct take on this. Droid phones will go unsold while folks wait for the iPhone. Instead of just slamming AT&T;.
This leak will really slam the new MS phone supposedly coming out this year also.
I’ll ride out my contract, I guess I am one of a few that thinks AT&T;is now better or worse than most carriers.
BLAH BLAH BLAH
so tired of this rumor
Gawd! Not again!!
Okay, I’ll make sense of this whole situation and answer everyone’s questions. Verizon is going to start offering LTE service in January of next year. This is what will enable the !NEW! !IMPROVED! iPhone 4 to operate on Verizon while providing concurrent voice and data services. It will all be available for all the anxious Verizon users — in three test cities. Outside of this test cities, Verizon will still be CDMA, and the !NEW! !IMPROVED! iPhone 4 won’t work.
There, is everybody happy now?
Why can’t insiders keep their mouths shut? Are they just so giddy they can’t hold it in? Come on where’s the Christmas suprise?
BTW an October announcement would have been better with a Dec 15th pre-order
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AT&T;has a 5 year contract with Apple – June 29 2007 to June 29 2012. Any reports before that are speculation until we hear differently from AT&T;or Apple or both.
I still call bullshit. iCal me.
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@ TowerTone–
Don’t forget:
4. Create some competition in the market, and hopefully, in the process, some better plans will emerge.
I agree with Mac Daddy.
This is just another stupid rumor. Apple is not going to let news like this slip out while they just launched an AT&T;phone. There’s more evidence, but frankly, I’m too exhausted by the futility of discussing this to produce it. Every week, every week, every week, there is a new “iPhone on Verizon” rumor and every week people fall for it. Guess it’s going to be true one of these days. But this is not that day.
How do you know that the Apple&ATT;deal is for 5 years?
@Steve516
How do we know that the release date of the phone is the start date of the contract. Actually that wouldn’t make sense since the contract would have to been signed way before the first phone went on sale. Apple announced the product in January 2007 right? That would then mean that the agreement would probably have to been finalized sometime in 2006, which at that point would make sometime in 2011 a viable option. We’ve only heard that there is a 5 year agreement. I do not believe that we have been informed of what period of time those 5 years covers. Maybe. Just maybe…
@Kevin J. Weise
Unfortunately, your take could prove to make the most sense. While I hold out hope for these rumors to be true, the time frame does suggest the (other carrier) iPhone to be a 4G variant, especially a LTE variant since that will be the new world standard (stupid Sprint!) LTE will not be rolled out to many cities by January of next year so there may be a limited oportunity of iPhones to be had. Again WHO KNOWS??? THIS IS ALL SPECULATION!!!!
PS. FOOD FOR THOUGHT: When iPhone first came out AT&T;and Apple had a revenue sharing agreement in place which is what made the iPhone so expensive. When the 3G model came out AT&T;forced Apple out of that agreement to cement a more traditional structure for iPhone pricing, one where the carrier subsidizes the phone. Hence you got iPhone 3G for the remarkable price of $199, AT&T;got rid of the revenue sharing deal and got a price that everybody was happy with and Apple got a new contract with AT&T;. Since Apple had to concede to the traditional carrier pricing and be relegated to just another handset vendor to AT&T;did they get a year back in the new deal? Could it really be just a 4 year or less deal than the original 5 that was signed? Something like this would probably just be a rider to the original deal but if Apple had to give up something one would think it would get something in return no?
Does this mean I have bought into another VERIZON RUMOR?!?!?
It’s going to be a long wait til October!
But I heard that the Droid is better. I read it on the internet, so it must be true.
A CDMA iPhone is not something I believe Apple wants to ship for American consumption. China sure. But not America.
@ @Steve516–
In the original, 2007 iPhone introduction, Steve said there was a five-year exclusive agreement with AT&T;.
How is it that no one remembers this?
I remember watching it and thinking, “Damn, that’s a long time!”
Apple has a 5 year agreement with ATT. If that’s changed, then it would be a “significant event” for both companies. Not doing so would be in violation of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. A significant event is one that would have either an adverse or positive effect on the value of a security.
Because MDN has a biased hatred of ATT, a bias that lacks any supporting evidence, and some delusional belief that Verizon will be better, it fails to find the facts.
Wasn’t Verizon going to be on the iPad? iPhone 3GS? iPhone 4? iPhone 3G?
This is getting boring.
It would suprise me very much if there isn’t a chip set out there (Qualcomm?) that can’t do CDMA, TDMA(GSM) and LTE, and in the quantities that Apple would buy it, it should be affordable.
A tri-mode iPhone is well within the realm of possibility; the only thing that I really doubt will happen is Verizon bothering to update its EVDO data network to SVDO (simultaneous voice/data) before LTE takes center stage.
I, for one, have 5 Verizon lines on my family plan, and I’m making sure that at least one of my phones is always close enough to end-of-contract to update to the iPhone whenever it gets here.
@Chaz:
Sorry, Android is a HORRIBLE HORRIBLE smartphone compared to the iPhone. Here’s just one chart that explains why:
http://scottworldblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/iphone-vs-droid/
I’ll believe it when STEVE says it.
Until then, it’s all just BS.
Personally, I think the truth about these two carriers lies somewhere in the middle and is obscured by all the FUD and hype. AT&T;is not as horrible nor is Verizon as awesome as is generally claimed. I myself get excellent reception on my AT&T;phone and have never had a problem when I’ve traveled. And I’m sorry, but the amount of data traffic that AT&T;has had to sustain since the advent of the iPhone must be staggering and would tax any provider’s network to the limits.
I am 100% satisfied with ATT. Best service available at my house and at office. I feel sorry for those who’ve had a lesser experience. Also, I hope this rumor is finally true. It will cripple ( not kill) android sales. It will double us iPhone sales. It will bring steve’s magical revolution to the starving masses.
That being said, it’s probably wrong, again. I was hoping for holiday release. Maybe apple can announce it before Xmas and sell gift certificates to put under the tree.
Right – thanks for the support – It was stated in the original release – 5 years exclusive. I can dig around and find the proof if google is too full of BS for all you doubters.
As far as the start date – well, to me it seems pretty simple really. Every person who purchased a new iPhone on 06.29.07 had to sign a 2 year contract with AT&T;to purchase the iPhone. Same holds true with the 3G, 3GS and now the 4. Before 06.29.07, AT&T;had nothing – without subscribers signing a contract, they had nothing to be exclusive about. So… it’s possible that it might be 6 months earlier – at the initial announcement, but it does not make business sense to me.
http://wirelessfederation.com/news/6966-atts-iphone-rights-extend-five-years/
—
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/confirmed-apple-and-atandt-signed-five-year-iphone-exclusivity-de/
—
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/10/atandts-original-deal-on-iphone-was-for-five-years/
—
google is your friend – search away. All I know is 2012 makes sense to me, and really, january or june makes no difference. Also, by then we might hope to see 4G / LTE deployment, which should change things dramatically.
And, for the record – the reason I know is because I read, and reread, and store and remember and repeat lots of information all day long. The more you practice, the better it gets. I also do not believe half the crap I see or read or hear, especially if it makes no sense, is illogical, and otherwise against my vulcan nature. so there.
Count me as a Verizon customer who hopes this is not true and never becomes true… despite the fact that I would really like to have an iPhone.
Except for a few, nearly every friend, family member and in-law is a Verizon customer… thanks to my wife, who managed to convince nearly all of them to switch to Verizon because of their cheaper calling plans.
Which is pretty much the only reason I’m with Verizon, and why my feature-laden phone is used for nothing more than making calls. I can photos and video – both of which have crap quality, which is fine as I can’t get them off the phone unless I email them to myself as attachments… and pay for the privilege as well.
How can you believe this dribble. These rumors are planted stories to help verizon. Three days ago, verizon proclaimed they did not need the iPhone. Now we have this
planted story. Why the change? Probably the churn at VZ is unbearable. By the way, I have always used Att (cingular) and have no problems until I call a VZ subscriber.
This is definitely (finally) true. All the naysayers will be eating their shorts.
P.S. I’m pretty happy with ATT.
@ steve516
If you read reread and remember then you will remember that AT&T;and Apple changed the original deal when they changed the pricing structure and revenue sharing of the original contract in 2008 for the 3G. All the papers from the lawsuit you reference in your links are from the original 2007 contract.
This is the only credible time of any real change in the contract. It is highly doubtful that Apple has pulled any shenanigans with AT&T;to weasel it’s way out of a legitimate contract.
I would rather have a fully capable iPhone with ATT than go with a VZ-crippled iPhone.
WOLF!
I wonder if these will be LTE-only phones, or if Apple will go to the trouble to create CDMA phones for the very short lifespan CDMA still has…..
I’d actually like it if the iPhone came to T-Mobile too. Verizon is a terrible company in terms of their greed and “screw the customer” attitude. T-Mobile, while a relatively small network, is a really good one, and the company is a better one (at least as far as friends who have service with it tell me), and more competition would be good anyway. Of course that would leave Sprint in the lurch, but what else is new, eh?!
If this is true, I really hope it’s not may Verion go to hell pls, it’s better to stay on ATT because the network load is going to be much lower when millions switch over to Verizon, for some odd reason.