Apple: Inside the cult

Vindication! iPhone to stay on AT&T, forever

Yes, I know: you all really want a Verizon version of the iPhone in the U.S. Who doesn't? Heck, with all the unprofitable pressure the iPhone puts on AT&T's data network, probably even AT&T would like some help bearing the load of all those data-hungry iPhone users at this point. Well, surprise! It looks like Apple and AT&T are going to recommit to their troubled marriage.

This is all according not to anyone at Apple or AT&T, but to some analyst at iSuppi Corp., but like all tech writers, I'm happy to quote analysts when they agree with what I already believe, and, of course, I already believe that Apple is stuck with AT&T in the medium term. The gist of iSuppli's analysis is that the iPhone is a global product, and the HSPA standard used by AT&T is more widely used than the EVDO standard used by Verizon, and the gap is growing. There are fancy charts that prove this -- or, you know, you could just listen to what Apple has been explicitly saying on the subject, though that doesn't get you fancy analyst points the way that drawing charts does, I guess.

To stave off the inevitable griping about how terrible AT&T is, my goal here is not to defend their service; it's merely to point out what I keep pointing out, which is that Apple, in choosing to make a single phone model for the de facto global standard, has little choice than to stick with what they've got. At best, they could forego exclusivity and also sell their phones with T-Mobile, but since T-Mobile is at this point sort of an also-ran, the most minor of the major wireless carriers, that wouldn't shake the system up very much. The only way the iPhone-on-Verizon scenario comes about in the near future is if Apple changes tactics and makes a second, CDMA-compatible version of the iPhone. Which isn't impossible or anything, but it's much more complicated than just signing a new contract with a different wireless carrier.

Of course, Verizon will be rolling out a new, GSM-compatible 4G network over the next few years, but that probably won't be omnipresent enough to justify GSM-only phones on Verizon until 2013 or so. And four years is an absolute eternity in tech time. By the time 2013 rolls around, the iPhone as we know it will have become something else entirely (or more likely several somethings else entirely) and the terms of this debate will be very different. That's why I stuck "forever" on the title of this post. 2013 might as well be an eternity away.

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