Like many people, I’ve been holding out for the iPhone to arrive on Verizon before upgrading. It’s been a long wait, and now that my wife has an iPhone 4 she got for Christmas (on AT&T), my iPhone 3GS is really starting to look dated. Fortunately, it looks like Apple’s component suppliers in Taiwan are gearing up to ship 5 million to 6 million CDMA iPhones to Verizon in the first quarter, according to DigiTimes.
Verizon has a CDMA mobile network, as opposed to AT&T’s GSM-based network. So if you know the components, you know which networks the phones will work on. We first reported last August that Apple was developing a CDMA iPhone set for a January ship-date. The DigiTimes report is the latest piece of evidence that this will indeed happen.
According to DigiTimes, Apple raised its overall shipment goal for the first quarter from 19 million total units to 20 million to 21 million units). It also estimates fourth quarter iPhone shipments at 15.5 million, which will bring the total number of iPhones shipped worldwide in 2010 to 47 million. With Verizon coming on board, that number could easily grow by 20 million in 2011, unless of course it’s entry just shifts demand from AT&T and the total remains about the same. I know that I am seriously thinking about switching. How about you?