Qualcomm Looking to Supply Chips for iPhone?

[Nermal]

The point where new phones stop being made for CMDA is still another good five years away. Hard and fast in the business world doesn't mean squat.

Verizon could still push for LTE phones. My carrier in NZ rolled out UMTS about six months ago and immediately stopped selling CDMA phones. You can still buy CDMA phones from third-party resellers but as you can see the range is getting quite small. As time goes on, more and more users will be on UMTS and the CDMA market will shrink. I can imagine Verizon doing a similar push.

 

[ktlx]

Also, true, CDMA will be around for a while still, but it will be to support legacy phones. NO new smartphone will be use CDMA a couple years after LTE rolls out. Verizon's CEO has already said they are going hard and fast to LTE for smartphones. ATT will do the same.

You can bet all the money in your pocket that it will be years before Verizon ships a new smartphone not capable of falling back to CDMA. Even after Verizon completes its deployment of LTE, its network will still be capable of handling CDMA because Verizon won't instantly go dark CDMA in 2014 as long as its locked in a battle over customers with AT&T. As long as Qualcomm is providing a CDMA/LTE chipset, Verizon will force its handset vendors to use it.

Verizon won't force its customer to chose between upgrading their CDMA smart phones to LTE on either AT&T or Verizon until the cost of losing those customers is outweighed by maintaining the legacy network. For analog, that cutoff was years later.

 

[mathcolo]

My concern about a Verizon iPhone would be based on Verizon's track record of crippling the firmware in phones they sell as a means to generate revenue. Sprint allows you to use a wide-open phone but Verizon phones typically have most of that disabled in a way that forces you to buy Verizon add-on services for simple things like uploading your own mp3s, etc..

100% disagree; look at the Motorola Droid. Is it crippled? Nope.

 

[bogg]

Wirelessly posted (Opera/9.7 (Windows Mobile; PPC; Opera Mobi/35166; U; en) Presto/2.2.1)

yeah..because One of all the phones they are or have been selling is a good example on how it Usually is.

 

[heisetax]

Verizon needs to learn & expand this new hands off theme of the Droid!

100% disagree; look at the Motorola Droid. Is it crippled? Nope.

If the Droid works for Verizon, Verizon will have their first lesson in allowing their phones to do all that the manufacturer & software has made it to do. That will open the way for the iPhone to work without the cuts that Verizon has done with every other telephone in the past until the Droid.

I have learned to live a cell phone that just provides cell phone service & forget about all of those things that could be useful.

 

[greygray]

Thank God. Now let's pray the Verizon iPhone threads come to a stop.

 

[Full of Win]

I thought that Apple did not like suppliers making ANY comments to the press, other than NO comment.

 

[DeepIn2U]

You can bet all the money in your pocket that it will be years before Verizon ships a new smartphone not capable of falling back to CDMA. Even after Verizon completes its deployment of LTE, its network will still be capable of handling CDMA because Verizon won't instantly go dark CDMA in 2014 as long as its locked in a battle over customers with AT&T. As long as Qualcomm is providing a CDMA/LTE chipset, Verizon will force its handset vendors to use it.

Verizon won't force its customer to chose between upgrading their CDMA smart phones to LTE on either AT&T or Verizon until the cost of losing those customers is outweighed by maintaining the legacy network. For analog, that cutoff was years later.

it all depends onthe initial roll-out and consumer/business uptake of the new network. Here in Canada two providers: Bell & Telus Mobility's rolled out HSPA+ networks over their CDMA and next year or two will go LTE. HSPA+ has been deployed at 93% coverage nationwide andwith the advantage of having voice and data at the same time - that is the speed of business and what consumers want.

Also the poor choice of half amr codec tha AT&T supports is the reason of poor voice calls and other issues of frequent calls being dropped are another matter.

Also not all manufacturers have dual-mode phones; Nokia, Apple, Motorola no longer does do they, samsung has 1 specific model just like RIM releases every 8mths+ this is NOT. A formula of successful sales or supply of phones or smartphones a carrier places their hedges against. Oh wait does HTC hybrid CDMA/WCDMA device??

If coverage can be extended or matched Verizon will phase out CDMA in favor of LTE in roughly 5yrs keeping emergency forces, internal business on while using that spectrum for more LTE support if it can. It didn't. Take too long for tema to die. Also how many of you out there usig hybrid dual-mode devices have had a smooth CDMA to GSM/WCDMA handoff?!! You would need two separate lines each on a different provider for that! I'm still reading to see reports here in Canada where we have this ability on 1 provider. However gsm to wcdma or back again works flawlessly and with a properly setup network, you would not notice.

 

[kryptonianjorel]

100% agreed - i'll go one further by venting my extreme displeasure for GSM's terrible voice quality.

My concern about a Verizon iPhone would be based on Verizon's track record of crippling the firmware in phones they sell as a means to generate revenue. Sprint allows you to use a wide-open phone but Verizon phones typically have most of that disabled in a way that forces you to buy Verizon add-on services for simple things like uploading your own mp3s, etc.


Either way, i'll be glad when the day comes that a company other than AT&T and Verizon are marketing the phone.

Long gone are the days of crippled firmware. Verizon has really turned a new leaf. While I still cant do things like uploading my own ringtones (but thank god for bitpim) They've really loosened up. The Droid opens up a new era or openness. 100% hands off. Now, VZW would be the perfect provider is they'd stay hands off for the devices permanently, and focused only on the network.

it all depends onthe initial roll-out and consumer/business uptake of the new network. Here in Canada two providers: Bell & Telus Mobility's rolled out HSPA+ networks over their CDMA and next year or two will go LTE. HSPA+ has been deployed at 93% coverage nationwide andwith the advantage of having voice and data at the same time - that is the speed of business and what consumers want.

Also the poor choice of half amr codec tha AT&T supports is the reason of poor voice calls and other issues of frequent calls being dropped are another matter.

Also not all manufacturers have dual-mode phones; Nokia, Apple, Motorola no longer does do they, samsung has 1 specific model just like RIM releases every 8mths+ this is NOT. A formula of successful sales or supply of phones or smartphones a carrier places their hedges against. Oh wait does HTC hybrid CDMA/WCDMA device??

If coverage can be extended or matched Verizon will phase out CDMA in favor of LTE in roughly 5yrs keeping emergency forces, internal business on while using that spectrum for more LTE support if it can. It didn't. Take too long for tema to die. Also how many of you out there usig hybrid dual-mode devices have had a smooth CDMA to GSM/WCDMA handoff?!! You would need two separate lines each on a different provider for that! I'm still reading to see reports here in Canada where we have this ability on 1 provider. However gsm to wcdma or back again works flawlessly and with a properly setup network, you would not notice.

VZWs CDMA network will be around for AT LEAST 5 years past the public introduction of LTE. VZW pushed a lot of money into its CDMA network, and it will continue to reap the benefits for years to come. It is a mature network, and a very large one at that, and doesn't make sense to turn it off so quickly. Once LTE is mature, I think it would be wise to use the CDMA network for voice and light data (who knows that kind of data services our phones will be using 5 years from now) and rely on LTE for heavy data use.

BTW, you must not have ever used a CDMA world phone, eh? It has a soft switch to change between CDMA and GSM, so when I leave the US, I can turn off CDMA (since its no good in Europe) and only have the GSM radio on. Why would I want to switch between a CDMA tower and a GSM tower on the fly?

 

[acidfast7]

why does anyone care about 3g anymore?. we're doing a nationwide LTE rollout and I expect 150Mb/s in Stockholm next year (and 99% nationwide coverage before 2013)

 

[Full of Win]

why does anyone care about 3g anymore?. we're doing a nationwide LTE rollout and I expect 150Mb/s in Stockholm next year (and 99% nationwide coverage before 2013)

Why care? Because we have 200 times the area of Sweden, and therefore extending coverage of newer protocols can be an issue.

I guess a better way to think about it that we you have 5X the population density, so one tower can service more people thereby making it more economical.

 

[christian_k]

Wrong on so many counts.

Apple doesn't design the phone for US Centric Carriers. They chose GSM because it's the global standard.

Right.
I wonder why so many people think :LTE=Verizon.
LTE is also the next step after GSM/EDGE/UMTS/HS(D)PA everywhere in the world. So
AT&T and T-Mo in the US will use LTE sooner or later.

So there will be an iPhone with GSM/UMTS/HSPA/LTE sooner or later. This is the way t go globally. Additional support for CDMA is possible, but not a must.

Christian

 

[Blinkwing]

100% disagree; look at the Motorola Droid. Is it crippled? Nope.

250MB install space for apps.

Crippled? Nah. Stillborn? Yes.

 

[bergmef]

Right.
I wonder why so many people think :LTE=Verizon.
LTE is also the next step after GSM/EDGE/UMTS/HS(D)PA everywhere in the world. So
AT&T and T-Mo in the US will use LTE sooner or later.

So there will be an iPhone with GSM/UMTS/HSPA/LTE sooner or later. This is the way t go globally. Additional support for CDMA is possible, but not a must.

Christian

I think in the US, they think that because Verizon is already rolling it out, no other reason.

If the iphone goes to verizon (I'm all for it personally), I would not be shocked to see it as a CDMA phone (voice) with LTE data and a fallback for CDMA data (with non-simultaneous voice).

A new question, is SVDO a tower upgrade? Software or hardware? Will it work with 'older' handsets?

 

[mccldwll]

Makes sense except that they went to a CDMA carrier first with the iPhone.

While that's certainly part of the iPhone urban legend, it's far from an established fact. Yes, aapl talked to vz about the iPhone. But since aapl always intended to build a phone for the global markets, it's far more likely that meeting with vz was simply to threaten T with going elsewhere. Aapl need far more than good pricing from a partner carrier. Aapl needed that partner to spend $$$ on network upgrades, and to let aapl run the show which was essential to iPhone's success. vz wasn't desperate enough from customer churn to do that, but T was. aapl knew this going in.

 

[mccldwll]

Other companies are able to have CDMA and GSM variants with few problems, so Apple's only excuse is laziness. Although the iPhone has only one model with one radio Apple still has countless bugs and problems in the firmware, so maybe they aren't able to handle programming for two radios.

Is that a joke or a troll? "Laziness" is never a factor in any very competitive commercial enterprise. And "has only one model with one radio Apple still has countless bugs and problems in the firmware" is not only false, but sounds like language straight from nok's talking points.

 

[bergmef]

Is that a joke or a troll? "Laziness" is never a factor in any very competitive commercial enterprise. And "has only one model with one radio Apple still has countless bugs and problems in the firmware" is not only false, but sounds like language straight from nok's talking points.

I think it was ignorance. It's a contract thing. If there is an exclusive ATT contract, why develop a phone that won't be used. Do some background work in case you do need it, then either go all out on development or use it publicly as a stick to hit ATT with for a better contract. I think the will not sign another exclusive deal, the first one was, in my opinion, to set everything up. They don't need it anymore. Everyone wants their product, they've made the cell company the dumb pipe. Up next, cable companies.

 

[kdarling]

Apple doesn't design the phone for US Centric Carriers. They chose GSM because it's the global standard.

I would argue that the first iPhone model was designed mostly for AT&T in the USA, as it was EDGE only and relied (still relies) on WiFi as a crutch more than any other smartphone. This saved production costs, and fit AT&T with its lesser 3G coverage.

The first iPhone model sold poorly in other countries where 3G is dominant, and EDGE barely exists. Once the 3G model came out, foreign sales finally took off.

If Verizon had accepted Apple, the CDMA model would've undoubtedly been 3G from the start, as Verizon only sold 3G smartphones at the time.

 

[Mind The Mac]

I would argue that the first iPhone model was designed mostly for AT&T in the USA, as it was EDGE only and relied (still relies) on WiFi as a crutch more than any other smartphone. This saved production costs, and fit AT&T with its lesser 3G coverage.

The first iPhone model sold poorly in other countries where 3G is dominant, and EDGE barely exists. Once the 3G model came out, foreign sales finally took off.

If Verizon had accepted Apple, the CDMA model would've undoubtedly been 3G from the start, as Verizon only sold 3G smartphones at the time.

Not sure this would have been the case. Verizon's CDMA is mainly limited to the US and at the time a combined CDMA/UMTS(3g) chip was not available. Put in context, Verizon only offered about 60m subscribers, UMTS worldwide is huge by comparison. China's two mobile companies and Vodafone alone offer nearly 500m subscribers.

Also an earlier poster noted the "other world carriers are way behind the curve". Check this link to the GSMA http://gsmworld.com/our-work/mobile_broadband/networks.aspx

Quite a few on 21mbps, many on 14.4mbps and loads on at least 7.2mbps. AT&T needs to jump to 21mbps and then follow on with LTE. Apple should make the next iPhone 21mbps compatible and then go LTE in 2011.

 

[Nermal]

Also an earlier poster noted the "other world carriers are way behind the curve". Check this link to the GSMA http://gsmworld.com/our-work/mobile_broadband/networks.aspx

Quite a few on 21mbps, many on 14.4mbps and loads on at least 7.2mbps. AT&T needs to jump to 21mbps and then follow on with LTE. Apple should make the next iPhone 21mbps compatible and then go LTE in 2011.

Indeed, AT&T's network would do with some work. I'm getting pretty decent speeds here, but as far as I'm aware you'd be extremely lucky to do this well with AT&T:

 

[twoodcc]

i just don't see this happening. i guess it's possible though