You're forgetting that many of the components in the initial iPhone hadn't really been in high-volume commercial production before. I feel pretty confident that Apple intentionally set the price in line with its production, and the moment they were able to solve their production issues and lower their internal costs, they knew to push that on to consumers. I've always assumed this to be a convenient excuse not to have demand get out of hand on a device whose hype was out of control. Moreover, its precisely the way Motorola rolled out its Razr. Of course they made the right call. In a worst case scenario, if anything had gone wrong rolling out its first phone, and they had to do a major recall, they'd be screwed. Instead, they offered people free replacements and quietly swapped phones out through their retail outlets.
First... what makes you think going with the CDMA Verizon network, would have made Apple MORE able to roll-out "worldwide" service for the device? That makes ZERO sense. Also, I'm not sure you're appreciating what the "revenue sharing" did or did not effect.
Kind of like how Apple dissed ATT by leaving then off of show slides?
Or like how Jobs used to make fun of Intel chips?
Verizon and ATT have the same rates for voice and data these days. Regular smartphone data is $30 on either one.
LTE is not based on GSM. It's new. However, many GSM and CDMA carriers have chosen it for 4G, and are running trials to make sure that their LTE implementation can fall back to their older protocol.
And, as long as LTE phones have to also contain a GSM or CDMA radio, that radio will most likely continue to be used for voice calls.
You're looking at this whole thing upside down and inside out in my opinion. In fact, you're logic is so twisted, I can't address one thing without explaining why 3 others aren't connected the way you have them clicked in there.
