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Mar. 31, 2010

The amount of rumors circulating every day in the wireless industry is truly amazing! There's not one day here that we don't get phone calls or emails letting us know that so and so is doing this or that. And today sure is no exception...

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is apparently developing a new iPhone, this time with a CDMA version just for Verizon Wireless. The new iPhone is expected for release some time in June or July.

Neither Apple nor Verizon Wireless would comment on the rumor, but Kevin Burden, device analyst for ABI Research, says that it's about time for Apple to make the iPhone available to other wireless carriers as well.

Burden added "we've been waiting a long time for Apple to break out of AT&T. If Verizon Wireless is able to pick it up, it doesn't seem that surprising anymore. In fact, we embrace it with open arms."

Both AT&T and Apple appear to be well positioned for a split. Burden notes statistics that show that AT&T reports that about 68 percent of devices sold last year were QWERTY messaging devices.

"AT&T is saying "we've even done very well with the iPhone, but it's not just the iPhone. We've got a respectable portfolio of devices," Burden added.

He says that Apple has to be looking for another spike in sales and the only way to achieve that is to break away from AT&T and attract a whole new slew of wireless subscribers on another network. And Verizon sure fits the bill.

But he also says that the whole handset exclusivity idea seems to be going by the wayside, citing recent migrations of Palm devices, as well as the Nexus One and the Motorola Droid.

The WSJ cites "people briefed on the matter," who say the next iPhone for AT&T is being developed by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry, which is responsible for all of Apple's previous phones.

A CDMA version of the iPhone reportedly is being developed by Pegatron Technology as well, if you can believe it...

As far as Apple's internal little secrets, Burden thinks it's equally optimistic about a break with its mobile carrier partner. "Apple's at a point now where they've gotta be asking themselves, 'Where's our growth? How do we grow within this company? We've been with AT&T for a couple years, where's that next spike?' You start making the iPhone available to subscribers on other networks," Burden says.

And the timing sure is in line with past iPhone updates.

Since the iPhone's initial launch almost three years ago, Apple has brought out a new iPhone device around June or July of every year since. So the question is, why would this year be any different?

Last month, a new study from comScore revealed that Apple's new iPhone 3G S smartphone managed to grab a bit of the Blackberry market share in the fourth quarter of last year.

The Blackberry's market share dropped a full percentage point to 41.6 percent in the U.S., while Apple gained slightly over 1.1 percentage points of the market, bringing its total market share to 25.3 percent.

Smartphones based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform actually lost one percentage point and handsets based of Palm's Web-OS also lost 2.2 points of market share.

ComScore also released data about the top 5 handset vendors for the U.S. market. Motorola was in the top spot but actually lost 1.4 percentage points of its market share, bringing its sales to 23.5 percent of the U.S. market.

Then, South Korean handset makers LG and Samsung came in second and third, respectively, with 21.9 percent and 21.2 percent of the U.S. market.

Nokia's share of the U.S. market actually slipped a bit to about 9.2 percent while RIM gained just over half a percentage point to bring its market share to about 7 percent.

For its part, Google's Android operating system rose 2.7 percentage points, more than doubling its fourth-quarter U.S. market share, to 5.2 percent from 2.5 percent in the third quarter.

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Source: The Wall Street Journal.