Hot Topic : Verizon Will Offer the iPhone Next Month

Ending months of feverish speculation, Verizon announced on Tuesday that it would begin selling a version of the iPhone 4 early next month.
¶ “Today, two industry innovators are coming together to deliver something consumers have been hungry for for years,” said Lowell McAdam, the president and chief operating officer of Verizon, at a news conference at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan. “We are bringing to market the fruit of our strategic partnership with a giant in the market, and that is Apple.”
¶ Apple had to create a new version of the iPhone 4 for Verizon because its network uses a technology known as CDMA, as opposed to the GSM technology used in all existing iPhones.
¶ Mr. McAdam said Verizon and Apple first began discussing the prospect of bringing the iPhone 4 to Verizon two years ago.
¶ “We spent a year in extensive testing and design to make sure it was up to our standard,” he said.
¶ Verizon’s iPhone 4 will be available for preorder Feb. 3 for existing Verizon customers, and will be generally available for preorder beginning Feb. 10.
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Verizon executives said the 16-gigabyte version of the phone would cost $199 with a two-year contract, while the 32-gigabyte version would cost $299 — the same as AT&T’s pricing. It said pricing for data plans had not yet been determined.
¶ The highly anticipated arrival of the iPhone on Verizon ends an agreement of exclusivity between Apple and AT&T. The partnership between Apple and Verizon is multiyear and nonexclusive, executives at both companies said. And it is likely to throw the smartphone market in the United States into something of a tizzy.
¶ Analysts say that the move could both double Apple’s smartphone market share and seriously hinder the rise of phones running Google’s Android software in the United States. Although the popularity of Android phones has helped them move past Apple recently in terms of market share, analysts say its lead may not last. In countries where the iPhone has been available on multiple networks, it tends to take over the bulk of the smartphone market share.
¶ Tim Cook, the chief operating officer of Apple, said the company had been “looking forward to today for a long time.”
¶ “We’re incredibly pleased to give Verizon customers the choice they’ve been waiting for,” he said.
¶ As with other CDMA phones, the iPhone 4 on Verizon will not let users make calls and surf the Web simultaneously. But Mr. Cook said he did not think users would mind. “I think people place emphasis on different things,” he said.
¶ Mr. Cook said the phone would operate on the company’s older, third-generation wireless network rather than its new 4G LTE network. Making the phone run on LTE would have “forced design changes we wouldn’t make,” he said. “And Verizon customers told us they want the iPhone now.”
¶ Company executives would not say when a newer version of the iPhone capable of running on the LTE network might debut. Verizon introduced several LTE smartphones at the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas last week.
¶ Verizon said iPhone users would be able to tether up to 5 Wi-Fi devices to the phone so they could piggyback on its cellular data connection, although it declined to provide specifics on pricing for that feature.
¶ The company did not say whether it would modify the pricing structure for its data plans, which currently allow customers to buy unlimited data. AT&T, by comparison, requires that its users pay for metered data plans.
¶ It is not yet clear whether the iPhone will put the same kind of strain on Verizon’s network that it has on AT&T’s.
¶ “It’s a wild card,” said Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. “There is no case study because we don’t know how it will behave.”
¶ Dan Mead, the chief executive of Verizon Wireless, said the company had been adding extra capacity to the network in preparation for the introduction of the iPhone.
¶ “We’re ready for this launch,” he said. “We have more than enough capacity on our network.”
¶ An AT&T spokeswoman had this to say: “For iPhone users who want the fastest speeds, the ability to talk and use apps at the same time, and unsurpassed global coverage, the only choice is AT&T.”