Apple's offerings next summer will include a Verizon-only iPhone compatible with the carrier's CDMA network technology. Dual-mode chips, announced this week by Qualcomm, might not be ready for prime time in 2010. Neither will LTE network technology, which is expected to enter widespread service in 2011.
This leaves Apple with only one option to expand to the largest US carrier after their exclusive contract with AT&T ends next year. Build a Verizon Wireless compatible iPhone.
The second half of 2010 could finally bring a much-anticipated Verizon Wireless iPhone. A new hybrid chip developed by Qualcomm makes it possible to communicate with several different network technologies using only one component.
This means Apple can manufacture one device, the "world mode" iPhone that will work on all of the networks it's currently compatible with as well as Verizon's CDMA network. Previous reports speculated that Apple would wait until at least 2011 for Verizon's launch of LTE technology.
The Apple logo on the back of your iPhone now has competition. Next week it will be possible to carry around a mobile device with three corporate logos!
Verizon, Motorola and Google each get their own billboard space on the Droid, scheduled for release next week. In a brazen act of branding, two of these logos (Verizon and Motorola) actually appear on the front AND back of the Droid.
Add analyst Brian Marshall to the chorus of iPhone owners, CDMA fans, speculators, AT&T haters and Apple shareholders clamoring for an iPhone on the Verizon Wireless network. Marshall, who works for Broadpoint AmTech, has noticed that Apple is moving towards a multiple carrier business model in several countries.
His analysis? The company will do the same thing in the United States. Completely ignoring the Motorola Droid and its associated anti-iPhone campaign, Marshall believes the iPhone will come to Verizon in the second half of 2010.
Several new features and refinements have come to iTunes 9.0.2, now available from Apple as a free download. iPhone users will find improvements in app sorting and media syncing. Users can add or delete home screens and arrange apps directly in iTunes.
Apps purchased on your computer or iPhone will sync automatically. iTunes 9.0.2 will also provide options for syncing individual artists, genres, podcasts or television shows.
If your iPhone is jailbroken and/or unlocked, iTunes 9.0.2 will not interfere. However, users syncing to iTunes with a Palm Pre will find that Apple has disabled this functionality (again).
Spoiler alert! Updating to iTunes 9.0.2 will break your ability to sync media to the Palm Pre. Apple has thwarted those wily webOS programmers at Palm for the third time this year.
Palm has been duping the Apple software into thinking its Pre smartphone is an iPod. One of the selling points to the Pre was how easily existing iTunes users could sync their media files with the device.
The deal was a long time coming but the iPhone has now officially been launched by Apple in China. By some estimates there are 2 million grey market iPhones in operation within the country already.
High prices and the lack of Wi-Fi on Chinese models may have shortened lines. The 32GB iPhone is retailing for the equivalent of $1,025 with no service contract.
Right now 93,395 iPhone applications are currently available on Apple's App Store, but there are almost 9,000 more that have already been approved. This means that any day now the App Store will surpass a magic number of 100,000 apps for sale.
Too bad only 0.176% of those can be installed on the iPhone at once. Just one month ago Apple announced that there were 85,000 applications available via iTunes. One year ago there were 10,000 apps available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
After selling a record 7.4 million iPhones last quarter, Apple is setting up to meet high demand during the holiday season. Inventories have been low in many countries as the iPhone 3GS has been flying off the shelves.
Apple will also be selling the iPhone on several new carriers in the coming months which could further reduce supplies. Carriers that will carry the iPhone as early as next month include Orange and Vodafone in the UK, Telus and Bell in Canada, and China Unicom.
Hope you're sitting down, folks. Take a look at the pictured SIM card trays below. Finally we have unequivocal proof the Apple tablet exists!
China Ontrade is the same company that brought us the iPhone 3GS bezel before the new iPhone was actually released. Only problem is that the bezel pictured had nothing to do with the iPhone 3GS. So file this 4th generation iPhone SIM card tray under ridiculous waste of time.
