With the ink now dry on a stack of AT&T contracts left in the wake of Apple’s iPhone 4, it looks like the carrier may have roped in all 1.7 million iPhone buyers just in time. According to Bloomberg, Verizon will begin selling the hot-selling superphone next year, ending AT&T’s longstanding monopoly on Apple devices.
Bloomberg cites “two people familiar with the matter,” whom claim Verizon will begin offering the iPhone in January 2011. Although no new details have emerged, the report seems to mesh with an earlier Wall Street Journal rumor that production on a CDMA iPhone would begin in September.
Rumors of the iPhone coming to networks have swirled almost since the very first generation launched exclusively on AT&T, but all have proven false so far. According to a USA Today article from 2007, Apple signed a five-year exclusivity deal with AT&T back in 2007, leaving it anchored to the carrier through 2012.
