Verizon Wireless on Tuesday finally announced that it will add the Apple iPhone to its smartphone lineup early next month.
Lowell McAdam, president and chief operating officer of Verizon, and Apple COO Tim Cook made the announcement at a New York press event.
Verizon will offer a CDMA EVDO version of the iPhone 4 starting February 10. Existing Verizon Wireless customers will be able to start pre-ordering the device on February 3. The 16GB version with a two-year contract will cost $199.99, while the 32GB version will cost $299.99. The device will be available at more than 2,000 Verizon stores, via Verizon's Web site, at Apple Retail stores, and via Apple's Web site.
Pricing plan information will be announced at a later date, Verizon said.
The device includes 3G personal hotspot capabilities, allowing customers to connect up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices.
"Today two industry innovators are coming together to deliver something customers have really been hungry for for years," McAdam said.
McAdam said Verizon and Apple started discussing the iPhone in 2008, and spent nearly a year in intensive testing and collaborative design. "Their team has been just terrific to work with," he said.
Dan Mead, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, was confident Verizon's network could handle iPhone traffic. "We have more than enough capacity ... we have designed this network for customers to have the optimum experience," he said.
Though Verizon is now focused on the rollout of its 4G LTE network, Mead said Tuesday that Verizon is "committed for many, many years in building capacity and improving the 3G network as we go. Our iPhone 4 customers will get an absolutely terrific wireless experience over an absolutely outstanding device," he said.
When asked why Verizon is not rolling out a 4G iPhone, Cook said the first-generation LTE chipsets required some design compromises that Apple was not willing to make. Secondly, Verizon customers were very eager to have the iPhone as soon as possible, so "we wanted to provide people that choice now," he said.
"This was the right thing to do at the right time," Verizon's Mead said.
Cook said Apple's deal with Verizon is multi-year, but Apple would not be commenting beyond that about the terms.
The announcement caps off years of speculation about when Apple might end its exclusivity deal with AT&T and allow other U.S. carriers to offer the iPhone. The most recent round of Verizon iPhone rumors started making the rounds in June, when a Barclays Capital analyst said the iPhone would come to Verizon in early 2011, followed a few weeks later by a Bloomberg report that said January 2011.
Around the same time, Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Bros., speculated that T-Mobile might nab the iPhone before Verizon, though he later warmed to the idea of a Verizon iPhone, pointing to the Verizon iPad and Verizon's recent earnings report as possible indicators of things to come.
How will this affect AT&T? Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster on Monday reiterated December estimates that suggested Verizon might cannibalize up to 6.5 million iPhones from AT&T. Overall, the addition of Verizon to Apple's carrier lineup could help boost Apple's iPhones sales by 2.5 million in 2011, Munster wrote.
Brian White, a senior research analyst at Ticonderoga Securities, meanwhile, suggested that Verizon could activate up 13.2 million iPhones over the next year.