A Reuters report out of China mentiond that Apple had been speaking with the local carriers about connecting their local brand of LTE with the iPhone.
There are some compatibilities and similarities between TD-LTE and the LTE that Verizon and AT&T are rolling out in the US. But does that mean Apple is going to build an iPhone 5 with any type of 4G LTE? I think it is unlikely. We do know, however, that Apple has been active in the hiring of LTE engineers over the past few months.
China Mobile is developing its next-generation TD-LTE mobile network technology and there have been talks over a possible iPhone tie-up with the carrier.[That’s about as vague a timeframe as you can get.]
Mr. Debarshi Kar came to Apple in January from Motorola where he was an LTE testing engineer. His hire might have been for this job. And that’s just the beginning…
Apple lists a slew of jobs with LTE as part of the description (below). But does it make sense for Apple to jump on this technology now? Remember, Apple builds just a few different device configurations. Most of the world won’t be on LTE for another year. Even Verizon won’t have much of the US covered by the Summer and AT&T will just be switching people on.
Also, remember Apple was slow to jump on 3G, instead choosing to keep the original iPhone on EDGE. It turned out to be a masterful decision which allowed to iPhone to last much longer on battery and a better experience until Apple could get the chip size and energy consumption to acceptable levels.
