Apple’s iPhone 4 launched in June of last year on AT&T and has proven to be one of the most popular mobile phones, smart or not, to ever hit the market. Many will have different reasons for picking it up, some need to wipe the drool off their face after taking a look at the retina display, others want access to the near half a million applications developers have written. Verizon got the iPhone a bit later than AT&T, this is due to their use of another wireless standard known as CDMA whereas AT&T uses the more globally known GSM, but that hasn’t stopped them from selling a ton of units. People often prefer Verizon to AT&T, despite the higher phone bill, because they offer better reception. According to Localytics, a mobile app analytics firm, in the 5 months that the Verizon iPhone 4 has been on the market it’s taken a 32% share of all iPhone 4 units sold. Now while such a number is impressive, Localytics doesn’t exactly go into specifics about their methodology, but assuming they’re right … it’s quite an accomplishment since the butt of every iPhone joke before the Verizon iPhone came out was about how dreadful AT&T was (and to some still is).
Now according to rumors the next iPhone due to be launched later this year will be dual mode, meaning it’ll be able to use either Verizon’s CDMA network or AT&T’s GSM network. Such a technical feat is credited to Qualcomm, who started out as a supplier of CDMA cellular radios, but with the introduction of Snapdragon became one of the most popular chipset makers to use when building an Android smartphone. The rumors say that they’ll be responsible for the cellular portion of the iPhone 5, meaning Apple’s relationship with Infineon, who is now owned by Intel (just the wireless unit), is kaput.
We’ll see what happens.