It’s rumored that Verizon will announce the release of a new Verizon iPhone 4g smartphone at an Apple event scheduled for the 27th of this month.
“We believe there is a good chance,” analyst Peter Misek said in a note to investors yesterday, “that the ‘One more thing…’ part of next week’s presentation may include two iPhone-related announcements: namely, the release of iPhone OS 4.0 and the unveiling of iPhone 4G coming to Verizon in June.”
Expanding the reach of a phone now available exclusively through AT&T Inc. will contribute to 37 million iPhones sold this year, up from an estimated 27 million in 2009, Misek said. The device is the second most popular phone among U.S. consumers, after Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry Curve, and helped AT&T add about 2 million wireless customers in the third quarter.
Misek says he has no info on pricing for the new phone.
He added that the new iPhone 4G OS will support OS-wide multi-touch gestures and multi-tasking, simplify navigation and may offer a new way to sync contacts and calendar apps; he says the OS update likely will be available only for 3G and 3G S phones.
[...] a while now speculation has abounded about when Verizon Wireless would release an Apple iPhone of its own to challenge AT&T’s [...]