Report: Verizon iPhone Will Begin Production by End of Year

The rumored “Verizon iPhone” will never die. Not until we see the iPhone on another U.S. carrier, most likely. The latest unsourced article about the device comes from the Wall Street Journal, which says an iPhone with a CDMA-based chipset will be produced some time this year in order to sell the device early in 2011.

The story’s information comes from “people briefed by Apple”, so we’d take the information with a grain of salt, just like the many Verizon iPhone stories that have come before this. Other details that are supposedly being uncorked are that the new CDMA iPhone will look a lot like AT&T’s iPhone 4, and that Apple is developing a fifth-generation iPhone model with a completely new form factor.

One other thing to consider in this story is that Sprint is also a CDMA carrier that would love to carry the iPhone. Because Sprint has been looking for ways to compete, it certainly wouldn’t hurt them to offer the iPhone along with their two flagship Android phones, the HTC Evo 4G and the Samsung Epic 4G.