Yep, the Verizon iPhone rumours are starting up again. Analyst Ashok Kumar from Rodman Renshaw is claiming after his check with ASUS that manufacturing of a CDMA iPhone will begin around August or September, and be available to the public in November. The previous reports regarding Verizon’s iPhone said that Apple was working on another as well, presumably the new one that we’ve been seeing so much of lately. We can only assume that Verizon’s will more or less be a 3GS with appropriate network compatability, but you never know – we might be surprised with a concurrent GSM/CDMA launch of the new handset.
AT&T has a lot at stake once their exclusivity is up, despite de la Vega’s cavalier attitude. AT&T has arguably ruined the iPhone for everybody, and no doubt there are plenty of people who were confused how Apple could go with AT&T yet again for the iPad, barring some hard bargaining. Verizon’s coverage and service soundly beats the snot out of AT&T in studies, despite the latter’s speed improvements from network upgrades. As much as a better network would do good things for iPhone end-users, Apple is still going to pump out devices through AT&T – the most we can hope for is an end to exclusivity and more options elsewhere. Specifics should be coming soon, since WWDC is just around the corner, where we expect His Steveness to unveil the next gen iPhone.
[via Electronista]