I mean, if RIM can do this on the new Blackberry Tour (a small handheld device) surely Apple could find the real estate for installing dual WWAN chips inside a much larger iTablet.

D.

I wouldn’t give much credence to this report. First, it’s penned by the infamous Scott Moritz. Scott was the guy who put out a report that Apple was internally expecting to sell 1 million of the original iPhones during its debut weekend in 2007 (never mind how a company can expect to sell 1 million units when it knows only 300,000 had been manufactured at that point). Scott then conveniently referred to his own made up report as “analysts were largely expecting” bit in a post-launch report talking about how disappointing sales of 275,000 were. Scott is a rumor manipulator preying on the desperations of Verizon customers who want an iPhone of their own.

The rumor simply doesn’t make sense because it puts up a huge barrier for iPhone owners to get the device. You can own one, but not the other with this business model simply because only a few percentage of people find value in paying for two or more 3G service plans simultaneously.

Here’s something that makes more sense. A device with nothing but Wifi that allows anyone to buy it and use it on existing WiFi networks. And if you have any iPhone, then you can add tethering via AT&T to get always-on Internet for the device, making it synergistic for consumers to have both iPhone and this new device.

The Verizon rumor makes absolutely no sense, unless you think it’s a good deal to pay another $60/month on top of your $80 cell phone bill so you can get always-on capability for a cheap $99 netbook that will be obsolete in 6 months, when anyone with half a brain will get a good notebook and tether it to any existing 3G device for much better capability (and more money saved).

This, of course, all assumes AT&T will finally have a tethering option for iPhone by the time the new Apple device launches.

My bigger concern is that it kind of puts people in an either/or position with respect to this tablet and the iPhone. I would think iPhone users would be an obvious target of such a device, but not if it’s on Verizon. Not because they have anything against Verizon, but because most people have enough problems with one cellular data bill a month; they won’t be crazy about needing another.

If Apple/AT&T pulled off free tethering with the device for iPhone customers, that would be a major coup.

Try 4G GSM on Verizon’s brand spanking new LTE network.

May 15, 2009

“Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam told those attending or listening in to a conference call that Big Red would have started to roll out its 4G LTE services in 20-30 markets by the second half of next year. Nationwide build-out would be targeted for completion by late 2013 to early 2014. The Long Term Evolution service will be the 4G network that will supplement and eventually replace the current CDMA system and is expected to be compatible with similar LTE services being developed at AT&T and MetroPCS. Average data speed will be between 8-12 Mbps. At the conference call, Verizon disclosed that all of their LTE devices will have swappable SIM cards. The carrier will have certification requirements above the minimum, which basically means that the swappable SIM cards will not be usable in devices not certified by Big Red.”

http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/Verizon-to-roll-out-4G-LTE-in-20-30-markets-during-the-second-half-of-2010-article-a_5070.html