The Verizon iPhone does not support the carrier’s blistering new LTE wireless network, but a future 4G iPhone will says China Mobile chairman Wang Jianzhou.
“Apple has made it clear they will support TD-LTE,” Wang recently said at the Davos Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We hope that when they develop the next-generation models, since Apple can create CDMA, they can also consider developing TD-SCDMA.”
There’s little doubt that Jianzhou is right, but while there’s little doubt that Apple will eventually take the plunge and release an iPhone 4G, it’s the “when” people are curious about.
Apple COO Tim Cook recently said that first-generation LTE chipsets demanded compromises in the iPhone Apple didn’t want to make, which translated means they suck up too much battery life in their first iteration. Additionally, Apple tends to wait for the market to sort itself out before adopting a new standard: even the original iPhone was behind the times, embracing EDGE when competing phones had access to 3G.
So yes, the iPhone will eventually access LTE, that’s almost certain. The real question is will it be this year, next or the year after?
