yup and will be released July 11th.

 

To correct some misinformation in this thread...

1) The iPhone 3G will be released in 22 countries on July 11th. 48 more countries will get the phone in the months following July
11th.

2) AT&T has a 5-year deal with Apple to be the iPhone exclusive carrier in the US. So, until sometime in 2012, I'd say, no other
carrier will have the iPhone. Sucks, but that's the way it is.

With that said, in my humble opinion, I think that Apple will find a way to get out of their AT&T contract early. It would behoove them to port the iPhone to CDMA to take advantage of VZW having (upon FTC approval of the Alltel acquisition) the most subscribers in the US. 70+ million subscribers is an untapped base that Apple would love to get their paws on. If just 1 million VZW users bought even the lowest iPhone 3G at $199, that's 200 million in revenue that Apple could see. Suffice it to say that more than 1 million VZW user would think of using the iPhone. Many won't switch to AT&T because of the inferior network just to get the iPhone.

Just my $0.02.

 

I think you misunderstood what I was meaning about the cost. It might be my fault because I wasn't very clear. I meant to say, when Apple set out to make a phone AT&T was the largest in the US with 60+ mil customers. They also use nearly the exact same technology as the rest of the world. So they could design one piece of hardware and with only minor software changes market this device to the entire world, whereas if they had gone the CDMA route they would be stuck with one carrier in each of few countries. I think they picked the biggest piece of pie that was on the table. Now there is another big piece but still not as big as the first one. Will it be worth the risk to lose AT&T to get Verizon? I don't think so.

I hear people complaining about AT&T on here but IMO they are much better than the others. I have been with them for almost a year now and have had very few calls dropped. The calls that were dropped were because of the area I was in like deep inside a metal building or tunnel. I really think that network strength is tremendously dependent on location. Here in Arkansas AT&T is by far the best. I had Allhell for a while they sucked, between the constant dropped calls (several a day), lack of coverage and the terrible customer service I was fed up. So much so that the last three months of my contract I had two phone bills just to avoid dealing with Allhell. But even as bad as they were the others (Verizon, Sprint/Nextel T-Mobile) had far worse coverage.

 

The one flaw to this is, though, that Jobs went to VZW first. He knew that VZW had the better service, so, best coverage + best phone = Home Run! However, Verizon Communications' CEO, in his infinite wisdom, did not want to relinquish control of warranty claims, allow the sale of iPhones in both VZW stores and Apple Stores, and, most importantly, he was adamant about NOT giving Apple a cut of the monthly service price. He took the angle of previous handset deals: VZW buys the phone from maker, and then does as it pleases. He felt that the phone maker (Apple) should just sell the phone to VZW and then not worry about the rest. Strigl (Verizon Communications' CEO) was very short-sighted in this; the AT&T CEO HIMSELF did not see the original iPhone until minutes before the phone was unveiled at MacWorld San Francisco in January 2007.

That said, if VZW had signed on, Apple would have been smart enough to go after GSM carriers in other countries. As it stands now, they pick the best carrier in each country of use. It just so happens (since they went with AT&T here) that all of the phones are GSM. Had they went CDMA here, and GSM worldwide, they'd have been just fine monetarily, as the volume of chips bought would have made two "lines" of iPhone okay. Furthermore, there are phones that have both GSM and CDMA radios in them. I can buy a phone right now from VZW and use it all over the world due to the dual radios. Now that I think about it, that would have been a smart play for VZW and Apple, but that's neither here nor there, now.

AT&T, to their credit, saw the opportunity of being "option #2" to Apple, and gave Apple pretty much everything they asked for. For current (at the time of iPhone 1 release) and future AT&T customers, I think the iPhone has been a blessing to their quality of service. The iPhone 3G will be an even bigger push, as people will be scooping it up, and then expecting 3G service in their area if they've not gotten it yet. They'll not pay for something long without all of the benefits.

 

That phone looks nice AZ, but i sure wouldnt want to go around bragging about a new phone called the "glimmer".



"Hey AZ what kind of phone did you pick up?"


"Ohh it's a super new phone called the LG Glimmer!"