Many iPhone users would happily jump to another carrier once AT&T's exclusivity deal with Apple ends. iSuppli's principal analyst Francis Sideco predicts this won't happen any time soon—contrary to much recent conventional thinking, which estimates Apple's agreement with AT&T will end by the middle of next year. Sideco writes:

Speculation is rife that Apple will end its exclusive U.S. iPhone service deal with AT&T when the current contract expires in June 2010 and begin to offer phones that work with the Verizon network. However, iSuppli doesn't believe this will be the case...The FCC investigation notwithstanding, Apple has no reason to move away from its highly successful exclusive deal with AT&T, which has already generated strong growth in iPhone sales and is expected to fuel a continued expansion in the coming years.

Sideco asserts there's no reason for Apple to add support for CDMA/EV-DO to its iPhone portfolio, as the number of GSM/HSPDA subscribers is expected to hit 1.4 billion by 2012. Verizon uses the competing CDMA/EV-DO standard. That should hit 305 million subscribers by 2013, far less than GSM/HSPDA.

I'm not sure sure about this one. All of Apple's leading competitors (e.g. RIM BlackBerry, Google with Android, Microsoft with Windows Mobile, Palm with webOS) support both cellular-wireless networking standards or plan to soon, sometimes both in the same handset. So why wouldn't Apple?

It would not be so difficult or expensive for Apple to swap out the iPhone's GSM/HSPDA radio for a CDMA/EV-DO one if it meant access to millions of more potential customers.