No iPhone for CDMA says Verizon CEO

Aren't people ever going to get tried of the iphone? lol

 

I'm not surprised by this. It doesn't make financial sense (especially with the world in a recession) to make a CDMA iPhone. Apple won't do anything if there isn't a benefit for them, and there isn't much of a benefit making a phone for CDMA carriers when the bulk of those CDMA carriers are in North America.

Yes, this leaves out more than half the US/Canada mobile customer base, but it leaves Apple with a lucrative worldwide market. It's not fair, but it's business, IMO.

Waiting for LTE makes so much more sense, especially considering it will eventually be the dominant network in N.A. versus the current CDMA/GSM split customer base.

 

This leads me to believe Verizon was never a possibility to initially carry the phone. It would have been counter-productive for Apple.

 

LTE will probably bring alot more devices to market for us Verizon users....

 

I agree, although this was a decision made more than 3 years ago, way before the recession. Also, Apple doesn't make very many models of anything. They are not Nokia or Samsung. Currently they make 3 desktop computers and 4 notebook computers. They make 4 kinds of iPods. That's it. So it's not surprising that they wanted to make one model of iPhone.


SW

 

I don't agree. A CDMA iPhone could double the US iPhone market, which is the big chunk of iPhone sales (~4 million/quarter). HTC produces CDMA versions of the various Touch models with smaller sales numbers. RIM managed to make the Storm a GSM/CDMA hybrid, again with smaller sales numbers. We've already seen evidence that Apple may produce two models this time around, although one is probably going to be a feature-reduced Chinese model (a larger market that would probably have fewer sales than the US CDMA market).

I think this is posturing on Verizon's part. The word is that AT&T wants to renew exclusivity until 2011. Apple is probably marketing to VZW to see if they'll put up more money. VZW is trying to downplay the importance of the iPhone. Result is either a VZW iPhone at lower cost, or pre-emptive face-saving when Apple and AT&T tie the knot again because VZW knows they can survive without the iPhone.

Basically, its not that a CDMA iPhone doesn't make financial sense, its that new business relationships might not make financial sense. I think AT&T is offering a lot of money. iPhone = AT&T in the US, which helps AT&T even with non-iPhone sales. Without exclusivity, T-Mobile is a big chunk in the US, and a CDMA model could sell to VZW, Sprint, MetroPCS, Cricket, and China Telecom (all together almost 200 million subs).

Too bad big business is about contracts and marketing rather than providing good products to any customer that wants them.

 

Funny. Each post on this thread offers a different opinion, and I agree with just about all of them
I guess it's just really hard to guess what's up with Apple without any inside knowledge...

 

I can't disagree with the points you made but...Even so, Apple's doing just fine with the way it is right now. Oh, they could make even more money with a CDMA version, but why bother? Even with the US and China markets, is it something they have to do? The answer is no.

We can speculate all we want about Apple's motives and business sense. I think ALL the different points made in this thread are valid, even if we don't agree on them.

What is a fact is Apple is raking in the dough, even with just one exclusive carrier providing the phone in this country and worldwide sales are also excellent.

If nothing else they've done what they set out to do: merge an iPod with a phone, make it cool looking, functional but simple and change the face of the cell phone market. They've succeeded. The iPhone has made its statement and here we are talking about it in another thread.

Apple isn't perfect, but they sure know what their doing with the iPhone. Even in a recession, it's selling better than anything out there. All of this is just my opinion, though...

 

Yeah, we basically don't have enough information to really know what's going on. There's a lot of money moving around that makes the decisions.

I just don't think Apple won't make a CDMA phone because they're content with what they have accomplished so far. We probably won't see a CDMA iPhone, but only because someone's getting more money by NOT having a CDMA model on the market.

That's part of what makes the App Store so interesting. If Apple continues to make so much money on the store, they may rely on that income more than the exclusivity agreements. I can only only hope.

It's more likely that we'll only see CDMA in the form of LTE/CDMA on a VZW branded handset in 2011. They'll probably be a LTE/GSM or LTE/WCDMA model too--not sure how difficult a LTE/WCDMA/GSM model would be.

 

Not sure why you brought Sprint into a topic about the iPhone unless you were offended by what I said. But I think it was a fair question. Phone popularity can't last forever and I'm wondering when people are going to get tired of it and want to move on to something else. Even if it did end up coming to CDMA carrier's I think it would be at the downswing of it's popularity. Even the Razr had it's 2-3 year unprecedented run and then people eventually lost interest. By the time most of the CDMA carrier's got the Razr it was already past it's prime. So this could be a similar situation.

 

...and that's the bottom line. That's what Steve jobs wakes up thinking about every day, not "...hmm, wouldn't it be nice if we could make a CDMA phone"

 

It is a legitimate question. The iPhone, specially the iPhone 3G has not even been out for a year, June 11, 2008 was the launch date I think, so it is still at the peak of it's popularity. It just seems longer because of all the postings about it. .


As far as losing popularity, here is some tidbit on it.:

"Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray has a way of guestimating sales of Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL - News) products by visiting various stores and watching how many are being sold. While there are some problems with the approach (margin of error, doesn't count all channels) with some historical back-up it can give a good indication of how many people are buying a product. He reports that the average Apple store is selling 22 iPhones per day (90 for flagship stores, 16 for general stores), which is well below July/Aug '08 (95 per day) and Nov. '08 (28) and suggests a 15 percent drop to about 3.7 million iPhones for the quarter. Munster suggests that with international sales factored in Apple may meet its target of 4.4 million units for the quarter, although the Street is expecting only 3.3 million. (Apple 2.0)"

Report: Mystery Shoppers Predict iPhone Sales Will Be Down, But Will Beat Street

 

Hijack a thread? Come on now. So I guess when it comes to Sprint everyone can bash away but certain things like the iPhone and AT&T are off limits unless it's a favorable comment? My intention wasn't to bash the device. I have never used one and I don't have any personal opinion on it. But I was just wondering how long this iPhone madness was going to last. Nothing lasts forever and sooner or later people are probably going to be looking for something else. IMO So my thinking is whether or not it would even be worth it for the CDMA carrier's to even offer one at this point. By the time they could even start selling one it might not even be worth the effort. Or maybe I am wrong. Who knows.

 

I still think the RAZR is cool.

 

If that's saying sales for the quarter will be 3.7 million US to only 700k international, then the fact that CDMA is primarily US only and not a large percentage of the world market, is irrelevant. Obviously the iPhone is an American thing and the US CDMA market could double sales.

 

I thought the RAZR had pretty much disappeared but then tonight I actually saw 2 or 3 people with them at the Dodgers game in LA. So I guess there are still a lot of them left out there.

 

How about you convince my hubby of that, he thinks I change my phones much too often.

I was thinking along the same lines. If those numbers are correct then Apple does gain quite a large market by introducing a CDMA model. From my limited observation in Asia & Europe, the iPhone does seem to be more of an "Amerian thing"; the Nokias & SEs are still more popular with Samsung coming into all ends of the market, specially in Asia.
Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

 

Can you imagine how awful the battery life would be on a CDMA iPhone? They'd probably totally need to redesign the thing to give it any hope of making it through a day of "normal" use.

 

You really think so? The two that I am familiar with, the BB Curve & the Treo Pro don't appear to exhibit much difference. Why would the iPhone act differently?
Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

 

BB's get great battery life on CDMA...whatever RIM is doing, other manufacturers should take note. The battery on the BB Curve my GF uses lasts twice as long as any of my WinMo devices (Treos excluded since they have big batteries) ever did.

It's been my experience that using data on CDMA eats up battery faster than GSM data, but maybe that has changed lately. It's been a while since I used a GSM device with any regularity, so perhaps with deployment of higher speed data services, GSM has "caught up" with CDMA when it comes to battery drain during use.

 

I just bought my dad a new RAZR V3 for $70. The 10-year-old old Ericsson phone he had was still working, but with the monochrome screen and big antenna it belongs more in a museum With new, unlocked RAZR's selling for under $100 I think it's a pretty good deal for a back-up phone or a new phone for an occasional user. It's quad-band (ie: world-wide) and is a decent phone with a decent track record.

GSM generally uses less battery than CDMA/WCDMA, mainly due to GSM not using soft-handovers (CDMA and WCDMA do use softhandovers). Softhandover means your sending/receiving the same signal from 2 or more towers at the same time. On voice calls, on average it happens between 20-40% of the time. HSPA doesn't use softhandovers, but regular UMTS (R99) does.

 

Yes ofcourse! However in this case I was talking about the difference in battery life between a WCDMA device & a CDMA device, which should be minimal.

I don't believe nowadays anyone gets a new data device, that is not WCDMA.

...and T-Mobile & every other GSM provider's 3G, right?


Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

 

Oh. I don't know much anout CDMA, but I would guess you're right, there shouldn't be much of a difference in terms of battery life between CDMA/WCDMA.