Rumor: iPhone to pass up Verizon for T-Mobile

Here we go again...except this time with a twist. The speculation that Apple would end exclusivity with AT&T and bring the iPhone to Verizon has been around for years already. But now, there's a new rumor that Apple is more interested in T-Mobile. Did anyone see that coming!?

The Cult of Mac blog is reporting, according to an unnamed "highly placed source" at T-Mobile USA, that it is "80 percent likely that the iPhone will be coming to T-Mobile in Q3." Given that T-Mobile runs on a GSM network (like AT&T) and Verizon uses CDMA chips, this idea actually has potential.

But seriously, the third quarter of this year? That would certainly shock everyone as that seems very sudden for Apple to open up to a new carrier - especially one that hasn't even really been mentioned in this debate before.

But maybe it's exactly the kind of press that Apple would prefer to see right now. There has been feedback that last week's press conference regarding the antenna on the iPhone 4 only made the company look worse, especially after several other competitors issued angry responses when called out about their own devices. If the attention was deflected to something bigger, perhaps most people would just forget about the antenna issue.

The catch with that is that if the antenna problem hasn't been resolved by the time the iPhone 4 is released with a second wireless provider, there's certainly no room for placing all of the blame for dropped calls and reception problems on AT&T anymore.