Verizon Wireless to start selling iPhone on Feb. 10

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Verizon Wireless made the long-awaited announcement Tuesday that it will start selling a version of the iPhone 4 on Feb. 10, giving U.S. iPhone buyers a choice of carriers for the first time.

Since its 2007 debut, Apple Inc.’s phone has been sold exclusively for AT&T’s network in the U.S.

“Certainly the rumor has been out there a while, so we’re very pumped,” said Laura Merritt, Verizon spokeswoman in the Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia region. “We got those questions periodically, and the rumor would surface, but we didn’t have anything to say about it until today.”

Communications Inc.’s chief operating officer, Lowell McAdam, made the announcement in New York, joined by Apple COO Tim Cook, who called it “the beginning of a great relationship between Verizon and Apple.”

Pre-orders will start Feb. 3. The price will be $200 or $300 with a two-year contract, depending on the model, about the same as the iPhone through AT&T. It will be sold through Verizon, Apple and other stores nationwide, as well as over the Internet.

Apple issued its press release at 11:11 a.m. Jan. 11, 2011, or 1/11/11.

AT&T activated 11.1 million iPhones in the first nine months of 2010. Analysts now expect Verizon to snag some users from AT&T, but the impact likely will be muted because most iPhone users have two-year contracts, and many are on family and employer plans. Verizon did not reveal its service-plan pricing Tuesday.

Verizon’s iPhone version will work only on the carrier’s current “3G” network even though the carrier has fired up a faster “4G” network in many cities. That superfast wireless data network is available only to plug-in laptop modems for now, but Verizon will have smart phones for it this summer. Cook said the first generation of “4G” phone chips would have forced some design compromises, which Apple wasn’t willing to make.