Along with its announcement that it will start selling Apple’s iPhone 4 in February, Verizon confirmed it will offer CDMA-compatible iPads soon, too. Word of the Verizon-compatible iPad came courtesy of the company’s CFO, Francis Shammo, according to Bloomberg.
Verizon will offer CDMA-based iPhones and iPads
Verizon currently sells the iPad even though the models that are shipping today only support the GSM technology used by its competitor AT&T. To compensate for the lack of GSM support, Verizon has been selling iPads bundled with its CDMA-based MiFi personal hotspot that shares a 3G connection with up to five devices via Wi-Fi.
Verizon’s CDMA wireless network technology isn’t compatible with the GSM tech that AT&T and all of Apple’s current iPhone partners rely on. With the introduction of the Verizon compatible iPhone 4 next month, Apple can begin offering the multimedia tablet through CDMA-based carriers as well.
Mr. Shammo didn’t say exactly how soon the CDMA iPad will be available. Since the second generation model is generally expected to appear in April, Apple may be waiting to release CDMA and GSM version of the updated model.