14 DAY TRIAL // Verizon Wireless might actually get the iPhone as soon as this summer, the latest news around the Internet suggest. Although AT&T reportedly signed a five-year exclusivity deal with Apple on the distribution of the iPhone back in 2007, it seems that the agreement might come to an end sooner than that after all. Apple is said to have already placed orders with Pegatron Technology for CDMA-capable iPhones, a move suggesting that Big Red might soon make an official announcement.
DigiTimes reports that sources from component makers stated that Pegatron Technology expected to start shipping the said CDMA iPhone units in August-September this year, with total annual shipments expected to reach 10 million. Although the company declined to comment on these reports, rumors on Verizon getting ready for the release of the iPhone have recently re-emerged, suggesting that the carrier would indeed start offering the device to its users by the end of this summer.
For what it's worth, the news regarding the length of AT&T's exclusivity on the iPhone are contradictory. On the one hand, the carrier was said to have signed a five-year agreement with Apple when the first iPhone came to the market back in 2007, while on the other, reports on an early ending of that agreement surfaced, suggesting that the original deal has been altered.
According to a recent article on PC World, the documents delivered by AT&T and Apple meant to prove their five-year agreement in a lawsuit in California do not demonstrate that deal between the two companies is still on. The lawsuit was filed in October 2007, and documents recently discovered by Engadget show that the original deal was set to end in 2012, supposedly confirmed by a USA Today story, which talked about the deal.
However, Hillard Sterling, an antitrust attorney at Chicago-based law firm Freeborn & Peters LLP, said in a recent interview that things were still uncertain. “I'd be lying if I said this was anything but unclear. But at some point, the contract will be revealed,” he stated, according to PC World. The USA Today story was cited both by the plaintiffs and Apple, each for their own reasons, but the current terms of the deal are still unknown. In the end, there are great chances that AT&T might lose the iPhone exclusivity this year, and Verizon's customers might be able to enjoy the device on their carrier's network this summer.