Why You'll Never See a CDMA or WiMAX iPhone

Among the few disappointments for US Apple (News - Alert) iFans, er, Apple iPhone fans, last week was the continued exclusive relationship between AT&T and Apple. Media pundits -- especially those residing in San Francisco and New York City -- would love nothing more than to see Verizon (News - Alert) or AT&T offer an iPhone that can operate on their 3G CDMA networks.

I'm here to tell you it ain't going to happen for a few reasons.

Reason #1: Steven Jobs doesn't like CDMA. Yes, it sounds like an oversimplification, but Jobs has a long history of simplifying technology and betting on technology with a future. Building an iPhone specific to a much smaller market just doesn't fit into Steve's plan. According to a piece on Yahoo, there about a billion people on GSM handsets today verses only 270 million or so on CDMA, with a good chunk of those in the U.S.   Having to build a CDMA phone for a smaller (and shrinking, see below) world just wouldn't sit right with him.

Reason #2: There is no future for CDMA. Verizon is taking the big and painful step to move from 3G CDMA to 4G LTE (News - Alert). Sprint keeps on dropping hints that even its WiMAX partner/buddy/puppet ClearWire could move to LTE in the future and regardless, its 4G future is not with CDMA. Even Cox (News - Alert) Communications -- one of the few cable companies that owns wireless spectrum -- has suggested it might go straight to LTE in some of its markets and is deploying LTE-ready CDMA equipment.

Meanwhile, the clear upgrade path for GSM networks is LTE with AT&T planning to flip the switch on some LTE networks next year. Nobody's talking about upgrading existing CDMA 3G EVDO data networks beyond the current Rev A. standard since LTE has rolled over everything else in the marketplace. 

Don't get me wrong, existing EVDO data networks aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but R&D on evolutionary improvements isn't happening because carriers aren't going to pay for something that will deliver incremental benefits as compared to LTE or WiMax.

Reason #3: Apple likes to keep things simple. Having selected GSM, it will stick with GSM and roll out a new phone design every year. Moving from GSM to LTE is a natural evolution and we'll likely see an iPhone LTE phone in 2011 -- when AT&T rolls out its LTE network.   An LTE iPhone could also appear on Verizon's network , but things are so sweet between AT&T and Apple, it's unlikely that Verizon would get its LTE iPhone (iLTE?) first.

The same 'like to keep it simple' philosophy which will keep the IPhone away from WiMAX (News - Alert); the effort and margins to produce a non-GSM/non-LTE phone just aren't worth it for Apple.