Apple Shopping CDMA iPhone to India Carriers: Report

[Paul Daniel Ash]

Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices have been in talks with Apple to bring a CDMA iPhone to India, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. The usual "people familiar with the matter" reportedly said that talks have "been going on as India is a big market for CDMA," adding that a CDMA iPhone "should benefit both parties."

The perennial rumor of an iPhone compatible with Verizon's CDMA network got a boost last week, with sequential stories in the high-profile Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Though the rumor has been fodder for blog chatter time and time again over the past couple of years, the coverage by two newspapers with a lot to lose if the story turns out to be bunk garnered a lot of attention. The price of Verizon stock even went up as the news spread.

Reliance and Tata have been exclusively providing CDMA coverage throughout the Indian subcontinent for the past few years. Though CDMA phones account for only one in five in India, the country is the fastest-growing mobile phone market, with 18 million new users coming online every month. Apple currently works with the giant carriers Vodafone and Airtel, but market penetration of the iPhone is a measly 1% of the total 670 million mobile phones in India.

Apple India spokesperson Anand Baskaran declined to comment about the report.

Source: Cult of Mac

[Daerid]

Time to move?

[Browning151]

If this turns out to be true and they get them before Verizon does, anyone who can get their hands on one and figure out an unlock to get it on Verizon here will be able to make bank selling them. You know someone out there will pay to have the first Verizon iPhone.

[rampagebegins]

Effigy tired of reading about verizon/CDMA iPhones.. I'm happy I moved to at&t :]

[editwizard]

Am I the only one thinking that a 'Tata' carrier logo on my iPhone would look really awesome?

[xxhorseriderxxx]

If this turns out to be true and they get them before Verizon does, anyone who can get their hands on one and figure out an unlock to get it on Verizon here will be able to make bank selling them. You know someone out there will pay to have the first Verizon iPhone.

If you only knew CDMA cannot be unlocked, period. CDMA technology is designed to be tethered to the carrier it is developed for. If you wanted to take a Sprint phone and make it work on Verizon, it would be impossible due to the nature of CDMA.

[chinmay007]

I will have to disagree with the post. One reason is apple has not given attention to the indian market. It does not have an oficial apple store only authorized partners. This makes a lot of difference in the pricing of all the products. In india all the apple products are sold with a pricetag ~ 10-20% higher than the US or singapore market inspite of the fact that india has very low duty structure.
Second fact, indians do not like to be bound to one carrier and still pay higher price for handset. We compare the prices in india with USA market hence feel the pich.
Third fact, there is a huge grey market which has better pricing for products, which also saves the company from providing the after sales service.

So.. until apple seriously takes initiative for the indian market... 1% will never improve.

[Kaisei]

Also, if you haven't watched Russell Peters before, apparently Indian people are cheap (contributing to the 1%). LoL jk

[punjabi212]

^^ haha Russell is hilarious. And yeah Indians are cheap,some take it further than others though >>>gujjus.

[alexevo]

If you only knew CDMA cannot be unlocked, period. CDMA technology is designed to be tethered to the carrier it is developed for. If you wanted to take a Sprint phone and make it work on Verizon, it would be impossible due to the nature of CDMA.

Its not so much that you can't use a Sprint phone on Verizon because of the technology. You can. Its that Verizon won't activate a non-Verizon ESN on their network with a few exceptions regarding Alltel. If you brought a Tata teleservices iPhone ESN to Verizon to activate, the system wouldn't recognize it as a valid Verizon ESN and you wouldn't be able to activate it whether it was "unlocked" or not.

[EskimoRuler]

Its not so much that you can't use a Sprint phone on Verizon because of the technology. You can. Its that Verizon won't activate a non-Verizon ESN on their network with a few exceptions regarding Alltel. If you brought a Tata teleservices iPhone ESN to Verizon to activate, the system wouldn't recognize it as a valid Verizon ESN and you wouldn't be able to activate it whether it was "unlocked" or not.

Oh

[GenesisDH]

Its not so much that you can't use a Sprint phone on Verizon because of the technology. You can. Its that Verizon won't activate a non-Verizon ESN on their network with a few exceptions regarding Alltel. If you brought a Tata teleservices iPhone ESN to Verizon to activate, the system wouldn't recognize it as a valid Verizon ESN and you wouldn't be able to activate it whether it was "unlocked" or not.

True, there are other smaller CDMA carriers such as US Cellular, Cricket and MetroPCS which have some means to flash and activate a good number of CDMA phones for their own network. So it's possible but not at all easy to do so. Verizon is the most difficult carrier to put an 'unsupported' phone on, followed by Sprint. They have rigid activation policies... so much for VZW's 'Open Network' policy garbage. *rolls eyes*

To me if a CDMA phone hits overseas & is managed to be activated on a US CDMA system, Cricket would be the best to do so on. $30/month with EVDO and nationwide coverage (which was a recent development) would kill BOTH Verizon and at&t's. I would actually look into that option.

Should be time to usher in a era of cheap unlimited mobile phone service. ;-)

[wcbardwell]

Is that the iPhone mini? Are there giant Indians roaming the planet? When I saw this article, I instantly laughed at how HUGE the woman looked in comparison to the iPhone. SHE COULD EAT THE THING! Sorry... probably did some quick photoshopping to get the story out quickly... Just tickled me to see such a blatant disproportionateness.

[Browning151]

there are other smaller CDMA carriers such as US Cellular, Cricket and MetroPCS which have some means to flash and activate a good number of CDMA phones for their own network. So it's possible but not at all easy to do so.

This is more or less what I was getting at. I've heard of phones being flashed for different providers, just don't know much about it since I stick with AT&T. You'd still be able to sell it for decent money to someone on something like MetroPCS, if you could figure out a way to get it on their network. $40 unlimited talk, text and web? Yeah, I'd consider that since I don't travel much and their service is pretty good around me.

[BoxedBeverages]

Is that the iPhone mini? Are there giant Indians roaming the planet? When I saw this article, I instantly laughed at how HUGE the woman looked in comparison to the iPhone. SHE COULD EAT THE THING! Sorry... probably did some quick photoshopping to get the story out quickly... Just tickled me to see such a blatant disproportionateness.

I was thinking the same thing hahah

[kuhndsn]

Did the iPhone shrink in that photo? Those are some big ole hands!!! lol

[XFaega]

It's been photo chopped. Look at the edges of the iPhone. You can clearly see it's been photo chopped.

[hapishyguy]

Am I the only one thinking that a 'Tata' carrier logo on my iPhone would look really awesome?

I will join you.

Thanks for the great idea. I will remove the TMobile logo on my iphone and put TATA now

[rackstar]

If you only knew CDMA cannot be unlocked, period. CDMA technology is designed to be tethered to the carrier it is developed for. If you wanted to take a Sprint phone and make it work on Verizon, it would be impossible due to the nature of CDMA.

Um I have a sprint phone on verizon. I have a verizon phone on cricket. I had a cricket phone on sprint. CDMA=unlockable get your facts straight