Digitimes: Foxconn and Pegatron Gearing Up Production of 25 Million Verizon iPhones for 2011

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verizon-iphone4

Yesterday was a big day for Verizon iPhone rumors. Hot on the heels of a rumor that Apple was working to create a reprogrammable SIM Module that might open the door to dual GSM/CDMA compatibility comes a perhaps contradictory report from the always dicey Digitimes that suggests that Cupertino has already awarded the build contracts for a CDMA iPhone to two of the biggest Asian electronics makers.

According to Digitimes’ sources, Apple will continue to work with Foxconn/Hon Hai to help produce up to 15 million CDMA-based iPhones, which will ship in 2011. Those 15 million iPhones will be supplemented with an additional ten million CDMA iPhones built by Pegatron Technology, who is hiring up to 10,000 new employees at its Shanghai plant to accommodate demand.

Digitimes has a pretty scattershot record when it comes to their Apple-centric stories, and I’m unconvinced that this rumor makes a lot of sense. If Apple is, according to reports, building a reprogrammable SIM module into future iPhones, that seems to imply that the Verizon iPhone will, in fact, be the same hardware as the AT&T iPhone: it’ll simply be cross-compatible across both GSM and CDMA networks.

Either way, even if Foxconn and Pegatron are gearing up CDMA iPhone production, it doesn’t seem likely we’ll see that phone anytime before January at the earliest.

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