CDMA version of the Apple iPhone expected in...India

The Wall Street Journal has its teeth chomped down on the CDMA Apple iPhone story, and it won't let go. The prestigious daily business paper is reporting that Apple is in the midst of talks with Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservice to bring the same CDMA iPhone variant expected for Verizon, to India.

A person familiar with the talks between Apple and the two Indian carriers says, "Tata has been in talks with them (Apple) for four to five months now," Another insider to the situation says that he is unsure when the launch will happen. In the meantime, Anand Baskaran, an Apple spokesman for India, declined to comment.

India is the world's fastest growing telecom market and while Apple does offer its touchscreen phone through 2 GSM carriers in the region, adding a CDMA version would give the iPhone access to about 20% of India's 670 million cellular users. 18 million new users are being added monthly despite the fact that 42% of the population earns less than $1.25 per day. Some analysts see the figures and compute that India would not be a good place to debut a CDMA model of the iPhone.  Daryl Chiam, a senior analyst at research firm Canalys says, "While the possibility of a CDMA iPhone through Reliance Communications or Tata would help Apple, it is unlikely to generate significant volumes in India."

In other Apple iPhone news, the exclusivity period for Deutsche Telekom to sell the handset in Germany has expired. The timing is poor for the carrier considering that the holiday shopping season is just weeks away. Two more German carriers will be offering the model shortly as Telefonica SA's O2 and Vodafone group PLC said yesterday that they will each have the Apple iPhone available in a matter of weeks.

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source: WSJ