AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone is coming to a close. While we have heard that it was originally a 5 year contract, these agreements change often over the life of the contract. As such, Macrumors.com is pointing to a source it has and says that an iPhone is coming to Sprint, possibly as early as this summer.
Macrumors claims that it first heard about the possibility from someone who works for Sprint in May; they do note that the source is trustworthy but they initially scrubbed off the idea as there seems to be more evidence of Verizon getting the iPhone instead of Sprint. But, it would make more sense for Apple to open the phone to both Verizon and Sprint to justify the creation of a CDMA iPhone.
CDMA is primarily used in North America by Verizon and Sprint while AT&T uses the more global friendly GSM. But, on a global basis, the CDMA market is currently at 480 million users, which for Apple, represents another massive untapped market for the iPhone.
It only makes sense that Apple will bring out a CDMA flavor of the iPhone in the near future. There is user demand on Verizon and Sprint as some people simply refuse to switch carriers for a specific phone. The bigger question is not if, but when, when will we see the CDMA iPhone?