As to CDMA call quality – it’s not as good as GSM. My wife had a brain storm, and bought me a new phone. She needed one, she knew I needed one, and just did it, without talking to me. It’s a CDMA phone, and quite frankly the call quality is horrid.

It’s going back tomorrow.

So much coverage like that – people wanted the iPhone but not the network. I cannot understand those who don’t see the issue here….

The only feature they can’t support on CDMA is simultaneous calling and data traffic. Big deal. My EDGA iPhone has never done that, and neither does any other phone on Verizon – so no one will miss it.

So you think it is $2M. Let’s say it’s $5M total cost.

Apple gets $400 per phone from the carrier. Assume they sell to .5% of Verizon customers.

90M * .5% * $400 = 180M

They are going to recover development costs even under worst case considerations. Can we put to rest the idea that purely in terms of the cost to develop the device it is not worth doing this?

They’d net a lot more if by chance it is a hit. No reason to think it wouldn’t be. Might be a lot of pent up demand for it actually. Not everyone on Verizon is a hater.

Apple has done well with ATT but I would not consider offering the iPhone to other carriers backstabbing – that is usually what happens after a period. Usually its a 6 month wait till a device is opened to the competition. In this case its been over 2 years.

And again, Apple can offer the 3GS to other carriers and yet still give ATT priority on the next version of the iPhone. If ATT has a 6 month exclusive sales window that will cover a big portion of upgraders. They will be fine.

As to cost – I don’t know. But I know numbers. Assume a $1,000,000.00 cost base cost (R&D only) to make it work, then about the same to finalize the hardware, and of course the OS has to be partially re-written.

Assume that Apple can sell a million phones through Verizon. Total extra cost per phone is probably about 5-10 dollars (including the hardware). But that assumes that Apple can sell a million phones, which is about 1% of the Verizon user base. Would 1% of the Verizon user base buy an IPhone? What if only 0.5% buy an IPhone? Lower volumes of hardware means higher costs for the CDMA chips, and you have to amortize the R&D over fewer phones.

Oh, and of course the new IPhone is missing features that the AT&T IPhone has, because a CDMA network doesn’t have all of the functionality of a GSM network.

So you are going to count on all these Verizon customers to buy a crippled phone. Will they be willing to do that? Or will they just switch to AT&T?

And of course Apple is going to piss off a partner that they’ve done very well with. Is that a good move? Do you really want to have a reputation as a hardware maker who back stabs their carrier partner?

Well, yes. We know that you’d be happy to back stab AT&T. That’s a good way to ruin your reputation.

Those stats would be meaningful if wealth were evenly distributed.

CDMA is actually an excellent technology. No question call quality is better on it than GSM.

How much do you estimate it would cost in R & D to develop a CDMA iPhone? $2M, $5M, $10M, $50M?

United States Population – 300,000,000
World Population – 6,740,000,000

In percentage terms the United States has 4.45% of the world population. Assuming the numbers above are correct for subscribers, Verizon’s total subscriber base is 1.32% of the world population. Where is the value in providing a CDMA phone, a phone that would have to be totally re-engineered from the current phone, to work on a network that is going off-line in 3-4 years? How would you recoup your R&D costs?

You wouldn’t. Not unless every single Verizon customer bought an IPhone. And just think – the damned thing wouldn’t work properly, because of the limitations of the CDMA technology. Oops.

And yes, the United States is pretty backward when it comes to mobile technology, compared to Asia or Europe. So is Canada. In both cases the governments listened to industry, which promised to innovate like crazy, if they were given monopolies, and as soon as they had the monopolies, they sat on their fat asses and did nothing.

At least until AT&T got desperate, and hooked up with Apple, on terms that Apple insisted on. Now AT&T has the top selling smart phone, and is picking up customers like crazy. Oh sure, they are having network problems, because they were lazy, and didn’t build out their network properly (like everyone else, they thought mobile internet access was a joke – which it was until Apple provided Mobile Safari). AT&T’s problem is one that everyone wishes they had, in this down economy. Too many customers, who like the product too much.

And all Verizon can do is hope that rumors of an impending CDMA IPhone will stem the tide of defections.

Vapor Warez. We has them.

Thanks I appreciate you trying to post this stuff. I thought it did not work after it did not show up after a few minutes. Not the easiest thing in the world to follow. Oh well.