No more exclusive iPhone carriers

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 20 January 2011 11:36

Your IT - Mobility

The era of the iPhone being exclusive to one carrier in a market is officially over.

Apple has revealed a new multi-year non-exclusive agreement with AT&T, which was the first carrier to take the iPhone.

The recent announcement of a Verizon version of the iPhone (Verizon has a CDMA network, where all previous iPhones were GSM handsets) made it clear that the exclusive contract with AT&T had either lapsed or had been brought to an early end. The exact period of the contract had never been disclosed by the companies.

"We are not in a contractual exclusivity now in any country in the world," said Apple's COO Tim Cook.

Even though Apple has found that signing second or subsequent carriers to offer the iPhone increases market share, the company is not automatically looking for additional carriers in every country. "Each market has their own parameters and technology," said Mr Cook.

He would not be drawn on the question of whether the CDMA iPhone would be offered by anyone other than Verizon. There are substantial CDMA networks in India and China.