Verizon’s Twitter account might have tipped the forthcoming arrival of the iPhone to America’s biggest CDMA network, but Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is still playing coy about the possibility of a Verizon iPhone.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Seidenberg says that a Verizon iPhone will only arrive “when Apple thinks it’s time.”
That said, Verizon’s relationship with Apple is very healthy now, says Seidenberg. He says that Verizon’s investment in LTE-brand 4G rollout is what ultimately brought the iPad to Verizon Wireless stores.
Could LTE also be what brings the iPhone to Verizon? The carrier is slated to reveal the first bunch of Verizon-branded LTE handsets at CES in January 2011… a month that is also heavily rumored to yield up the much-anticipated Verizon iPhone. Could the leaked Verizon iPhone 4 we saw the other day have an LTE chip nuzzled in its guts?
Only time will tell, but given the way Verizon iPhone rumors inevitably fizzle out, we’re not banking on it.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
