(Image courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider)
A Bloomberg report on Tuesday claims that AT&T competitor Verizon Wireless may finally get the iPhone come January (we’ll believe it when we see it!), while an Oppenheimer analyst claims that Apple has 12 million waiting customers from the rival carrier, which could add another $7 billion to their already loaded coffers.
Rumors of Verizon Wireless getting the iPhone are tossed about so much these days that there must be some kernel of truth that Apple is at least working on a CDMA-compatible handset. On Tuesday, Engadget reported that Verizon may finally get the device come January, breaking AT&T’s exclusive stranglehold at long last, according to a Bloomberg report.
Lending some credence to that report, apparently “two people familiar with the plans” (which has to be better than the usual single tipster, we figure) claim that Apple will begin producing the CDMA handsets in September for a launch “sometime in January.” We’ve heard all of this before, and it was even reported back in March by The Wall Street Journal as well.
The more interesting bit of Verizon-iPhone news comes courtesy of Fortune scribe Philip Elmer-Dewitt. According to Silicon Alley Insider, should AT&T’s exclusive on the iPhone end, “Verizon would likely provide at least 12 million net additional unit sales for Apple,” claims Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner. Those units would add $7 billion or more in revenue for Apple.
We have no doubt that Steve Jobs and Company have already run those numbers internally, but adding a second U.S. carrier is also seen as a way to “blunt the competitive threat from Google’s Android platform, which Verizon has been promoting heavily as its answer to the iPhone.”
At this point, the iPhone running on Verizon Wireless would seem to be a sure thing -- eventually. So the question may not be “if” but rather, “when.” Stay tuned.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
