The Wall Street Journal is claiming that Apple is in talks with 2 Indian carriers over a CDMA version of the iPhone. The two carriers in question are Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices. No time frame was mentioned except "near future".
CDMA iPhones are apparently all the rage lately, especially since Verizon iPhone rumors won't die. Although GSM may be considered a worldwide standard these days, the CDMA market still caters to around 550 million users. Adding them into Apple's pool of customers should definitely be something they're interested in doing. India's mobile phone market has exploded in recent years. Nearly 20% of mobile phone subscribers are CDMA customers. That averages out to around 130 million CDMA subscribers in India alone. It's logical Apple would have an interest.
India's phone market has been a heated competition between top manufacturers like HTC, RIM, and Nokia. Perhaps Apple wants a piece of the CDMA subscriber base to increase their extremely low market share in India. Could all these CDMA iPhone rumors be misplaced or do you think we'll see a CDMA iPhone sooner rather than later?
[WSJ via AppleInsider]
