No iPhone Outside of AT&T For The Foreseeable Future. Are you Disappointed?

When asked about the exclusive iPhone deal between Apple and AT&T during today’s earnings conference call, Tim Cook (Apple’s COO) said:

“We believe they’re the best wireless provider in the U.S.,” “They put the full force and weight of their company behind it. We’re very happy with the relationship we have and do not have a plan to change it.”

That seems like a pretty good indication that this deal will indeed continue. May be even beyond 2010, time at which the AT&T exclusivity goes away, in theory. In practice, Apple does not have so many choices anyway. Without a CDMA version of the handset (which would imply a new hardware design, more support, drivers…) Apple cannot go to Verizon or Sprint. On the GSM side, there’s T-Mobile and while we would absolutely love a UMA-enabled iPhone, the chance of that happening are fairly slim. (image from dvice)