Verizon wants the iPhone, but does Apple want Verizon?

Verizon Communications Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg finally put aside the company's long-standing coyness about when it might entertain an iPhone on its network. He told analysts during the company's third-quarter conference call this week that the company would be happy to have the iPhone, but that the decision "is exclusively in Apple's court."

"We would obviously be interested at any point if they thought of us as a partner," he said of Apple.

Verizon added about 1.2 million new subscribers in the third quarter, while rival AT&T, the exclusive operator of the iPhone, saw 2 million new subscribers. Seidenberg, however, emphasized that the company's strategy has always been around a broad range of products. Today, the company introduced the Motorola DROID, which is based on Google's Android platform. It will also carry the new BlackBerry Storm2. Interestingly, Verizon is heavily pitting the DROID against the iPhone (see related article).

Meanwhile, AT&T said it activated 3.2 million iPhones, the company's largest amount to date, with nearly 40 percent of those activations from customers that were new to AT&T. But AT&T's exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone in the U.S. may soon be ending. The deal has been rumored end in 2010, and AT&T Mobility chief Ralph de la Vega implied that may indeed be true. De la Vega said that even if the company loses its exclusivity, he believes AT&T will still have an advantage because the carrier supports an iPhone that uses a faster version of HSPA technology. "The iPhone will work better on our network than on anyone else's network," he said.

However, AT&T has been overwhelmed by the data usage on its network coming from the iPhone, spurring complaints from end users. Still, it appears that Apple wants to forgo making a CDMA version of the iPhone. CDMA is the technology that Verizon Wireless operates.

For more:
- see this CNET article

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