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Apple Increases 1st Quarter iPhone Shipments to 21 Million, Including the Verizon iPh

Geckotek said:
kdarling said:
Proof is not needed to know that standard practices include exit clauses in almost every contract of this nature. The posiblity that the contract may have been until 2012 but has since been killed due to some buyout or failure to keep an SLA is very possible if not probable at this point.

Sitting there standing on the contract as your only foundation for denying the possibility of a Verizon iPhone is weak at best. Almost nobody in this forum believes that. Only 3-4 of you continue to throw that out there.

I agree the WSJ had a bad track record, but we now have confirmation from multiple independent sources. This rumor is no longer just running based on a story from the WSJ.
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Do we really know it is multiple independent sources? Or is it not simply multiple reports of the same rumor? WSJ does not offer anything to make us believe their source is actually someone from Apple or Verizon. In fact they state that those companies refused comment. Their article from March that hinted at a September release noted a manufacturer as the source. Have we not seen rumors such as that not be reliable? A manufacturer could be speculating when in fact the product is meant for Chinese markets, not Verizon in the US.
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ten-oak-druid said:
.... Their article from March that hinted at a September release noted a manufacturer as the source. ....
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It did not hint at a September release at all...

New iPhone Could End AT&T's U.S. Monopoly
By YUKARI IWATANI KANE, TING-I TSAI And NIRAJ SHETH
The Wall Street Journal
MARCH 30, 2010

"Apple Inc. plans to begin producing this year a new iPhone that could allow U.S. phone carriers other than AT&T Inc. to sell the iconic gadget, said people briefed by the company.

The new iPhone would work on a type of wireless network called CDMA, these people said. CDMA is used by Verizon Wireless, AT&T's main competitor, as well as Sprint Nextel Corp. and a handful of cellular operators in countries including South Korea and Japan. The vast majority of carriers world-wide, including AT&T, use another technology called GSM.

...

One person familiar with the situation said Pegatron is scheduled to start mass producing CDMA iPhones in September. Other people said, however, that the schedule could change and the phone may not be available to consumers immediately after production begins.

..."
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...and the claim that production started in September has not yet been proven false.
 
ten-oak-druid said:
Do we really know it is multiple independent sources? Or is it not simply multiple reports of the same rumor? WSJ does not offer anything to make us believe their source is actually someone from Apple or Verizon. In fact they state that those companies refused comment. Their article from March that hinted at a September release noted a manufacturer as the source. Have we not seen rumors such as that not be reliable? A manufacturer could be speculating when in fact the product is meant for Chinese markets, not Verizon in the US.
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Yes, because we have an "unknown" source from WSJ, we have a source from Digitimes, a source from Fortune, and a statement from Skype.

Even if some of these are the same (which I doubt in the case of Fortune based on how they word it), there's still more than one here.
 
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Question for those in the know

I've read somewhere (sorry can't find it now) that a CDMA radio chipset has been created that could be upgraded to LTE with a firmware update. If this is true, how probable is it that Apple would incorporate this for any Verizon iPhone?
 
ten-oak-druid said:
Do we really know it is multiple independent sources? Or is it not simply multiple reports of the same rumor? WSJ does not offer anything to make us believe their source is actually someone from Apple or Verizon. In fact they state that those companies refused comment. Their article from March that hinted at a September release noted a manufacturer as the source. Have we not seen rumors such as that not be reliable? A manufacturer could be speculating when in fact the product is meant for Chinese markets, not Verizon in the US.
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Methinks that someone thust protest to much.
 
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Geckotek said:
Yes, because we have an "unknown" source from WSJ, we have a source from Digitimes, a source from Fortune, and a statement from Skype.

Even if some of these are the same (which I doubt in the case of Fortune based on how they word it), there's still more than one here.
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The New York Times also said the same thing based upon their own source...that Apple is producing a CDMA iphone.
 
vastoholic said:
I don't think that's a problem. Depending on if the people that bought the phone for christmas also set up a new plan or added on to an existing plan, they have to worry about paying the ETF. Unless that's been shot down completely. I received a text from ATT about a class action suit against their ETF policy. Anyone heard any word on if they can still charge you for getting out of your contract early?

What I mean is, if the ETF policy is still in effect, many users won't want to pay it just to return the phone to get the Verizon version.
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You have 30 days to cancel your plan + return/exchange your phone for a $35 restocking fee
 
URFloorMatt said:
I don't think anyone that set on getting a Verizon iPhone just started a new AT&T plan on December 25.

Will there be a lot of people who jump ship? Probably, but exceedingly few of them will do it mid-contract.
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I was referring to all the Android sales for Christmas
 
Hmm.

Does everyone remember back in January 2007 when Apple first launched the original iPhone? They said they went with AT&T because Verizon said they didn't want to make all the backend changes needed for Visual Voicemail. To get AT&T to agree to this, Apple signed a 5 year exclusive deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone in the US. FIVE YEARS after January 2007 is not January 2011, it's January 2012. So, there will be NO iPhone on Verizon for at least another year.

If Apple wants to make a CDMA iPhone for the worldwide market, the absolutely can. However, Apple can't just go and break contract with AT&T because people on a forum want a Verizon iPhone. The rumors have been around for 3 years now, but its still not happening.
 
zioxide said:
Hmm.

Does everyone remember back in January 2007 when Apple first launched the original iPhone? They said they went with AT&T because Verizon said they didn't want to make all the backend changes needed for Visual Voicemail. To get AT&T to agree to this, Apple signed a 5 year exclusive deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone in the US. FIVE YEARS after January 2007 is not January 2011, it's January 2012. So, there will be NO iPhone on Verizon for at least another year.

If Apple wants to make a CDMA iPhone for the worldwide market, the absolutely can. However, Apple can't just go and break contract with AT&T because people on a forum want a Verizon iPhone. The rumors have been around for 3 years now, but its still not happening.
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Do you have a source for this 5 year deal tied to VVM?
 
NKT said:
I'll let kdarling's post speak for me:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/11629719/

Where in the Macworld keynote does Job's say it's a 5 year deal? I'm not watching the whole 117 minutes.
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I'm not watching the whole thing again either. But I swear I remember him saying it. I feel like it was even on one of the keynote slides, but I could be wrong about that.

The court documents in that Engadget article don't lie though. Those quotes are from Apple's lawyers specifically saying it was a five-year deal. Lawyers can't lie in court about things like that.

Apple Lawyers said:
"The duration of the exclusive Apple-[AT&T] agreement was not 'secret' either. The [plaintiff] quotes a May 21, 2007 USA Today article – published over a month before the iPhone's release – stating, "AT&T has exclusive U.S. distribution rights for five years-an eternity in the go-go cellphone world."
...
"[T]here was widespread disclosure of [AT&T's] five-year exclusivity and no suggestion by Apple or anyone else that iPhones would become unlocked after two years... Moreover, it is sheer speculation – and illogical – that failing to disclose the five-year exclusivity term would produce monopoly power..."
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Now there is always the possibility that AT&T did something to breach contract, and that is no longer valid. However, there is no concrete proof of this, or any verizon iphone. It's just rumors. I'll believe the concrete evidence that we have of the 5 year deal before I believe some random rumors.
 
Who cares if its a five, ten or twenty year deal. Like many have said, all contracts have escape clauses. Do you think either party would be dumb enough to sign something that tied their hands with no way out? AT&T can't handle much more on their network before it comes to a crashing halt. They are already installing wifi hotspots just to remove some congestion as it is.
 
zioxide said:
I'm not watching the whole thing again either. But I swear I remember him saying it. I feel like it was even on one of the keynote slides, but I could be wrong about that.
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Only talk of exclisivity I can find is this:

10:53am - "We are changing the way companies work together. Apple and Cingular have a multi-year exclusive partnership. This is not an MVNO -- ours is a unique relationship that lets Apple be Apple, and let's Cingular be Cingular."

The court documents in that Engadget article don't lie though. Those quotes are from Apple's lawyers specifically saying it was a five-year deal. Lawyers can't lie in court about things like that.



Now there is always the possibility that AT&T did something to breach contract, and that is no longer valid, but until there is any proof of that happening at all, I'm going to continue to believe that 5-year deal is still valid.
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They never said what the term was. They just pointed to an article in USA today. The five year quote came from Strigl not AT&T. If it wasn't set to end until 2012, why did they get an extension into 2010?
 
zioxide said:
The court documents in that Engadget article don't lie though. Those quotes are from Apple's lawyers specifically saying it was a five-year deal. Lawyers can't lie in court about things like that.
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They're not lying. They're only quoting and referring to something the Plaintiff (not Apple & not AT&T) said... and the Plaintiff was directly quoting the USA Today article.

Engadget totally gets it wrong and that's why, as they put it, "it's sort of amazing we [Engadget] hadn't seen it earlier".
 
zioxide said:
Hmm.

Does everyone remember back in January 2007 when Apple first launched the original iPhone? They said they went with AT&T because Verizon said they didn't want to make all the backend changes needed for Visual Voicemail. To get AT&T to agree to this, Apple signed a 5 year exclusive deal with AT&T to carry the iPhone in the US. FIVE YEARS after January 2007 is not January 2011, it's January 2012. So, there will be NO iPhone on Verizon for at least another year.

If Apple wants to make a CDMA iPhone for the worldwide market, the absolutely can. However, Apple can't just go and break contract with AT&T because people on a forum want a Verizon iPhone. The rumors have been around for 3 years now, but its still not happening.
Click to expand...

You completely ignore how contracts work in the real world. They change, get ammended, have exit clauses, etc...

It's not black and white. Signing a 5 year agreement does not always result in 5 actual years of abiding to the contract. Contract end prematurely all the time when one of the parties decides too exercise some sort of exit strategy that was built in.
 
Geckotek said:
You completely ignore how contracts work in the real world. They change, get ammended, have exit clauses, etc...

It's not black and white. Signing a 5 year agreement does not always result in 5 actual years of abiding to the contract. Contract end prematurely all the time when one of the parties decides too exercise some sort of exit strategy that was built in.
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Agreed. Let me add... even without an exit clause of sorts, the only thing stopping a party from breaching a contract is the threat of monetary penalties after losing a civil lawsuit that may or may not be brought.

You weigh your options, break your contract and pay your lawyers. It's just that simple... and for companies the size of AT&T and Apple, it's part of doing business.
 
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