Apple That

According to internet rumors, Verizon is supposedly hiring hundreds of call center staff through third-party hiring companies, fueling speculation that Verizon, the largest wireless carrier in the United States, is preparing to launch the iPhone according to a new report.

Teleperformance and Ryla, two customer service call center staffing companies, are looking for thousands of customer service representatives to field calls for a “major wireless cell phone service retailer,” according to a report from CNET.

Different posts from around the internet reveal that the positions will be dedicated to either a wireless, cell phone or communications company with additional positions offering technical support for personal computers as well as portable devices like MP3 players and smartphones.

One Teleperformance call center in Augusta, Georgia will more than double its employees through the hiring campaigns. “It is for a major wireless company that we have secured a new line of business, one of our existing clients,” said Marcie Ballard, Vice President of Recruiting for Teleperformance.

Both Teleperformance and Ryla have prior experience supporting Verizon. Teleperformance also works with Apple, in addition to Verizon Wireless and the other major cell phone carriers in the past. Ryla has worked with Verizon for over 10 years.

The connection between a Verizon iPhone and the massive call center recruiting is tenuous at best and could quite possible be due to the fact that Verizon has lost more ground to AT&T in the third quarter than previously expected. Third quarter earning reports from Verizon and AT&T showed that Verizon netted 584,000 new monthly-bill paying customers as opposed to AT&T’s 745,000.

Verizon CFO John Killian told Reuters that Verizon expects to add 550,000 to 600,000 new monthly-bill paying customers in the fourth quarter. This number is less than half of last year’s number. Killian also stressed the importance of converting standard users into smartphone users in order to increase revenue through sales of data plans.

Verizon is currently the largest telecommunications network in the country with 93.2 million subscribers. However, they might not hold that position long as AT&T is nipping at their heels with 92.8 million subscribers.

On Thursday AT&T announced that it had activated a record 5.2 million iPhones in the September quarter. AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson called it a “terrific quarter”. AT&T also had a record number of customers signing two-year contracts.

Rumors of a 2011 Verizon gained a lot of credence this month when The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is prepping a CDMA, Verizon-compatible iPhone for production by the end of this year. Some analysts believe Verizon could sell as many as 12 million iPhones in its first year of availability.

Responding to the report from the Journal, Verizon COO Lowell McAdam told the press earlier this month that news of a Verizon iPhone would have to come directly from Apple.

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To say that Apple likes glass is a bit of an understatement. Don’t believe me? Then walk into any one of Apple’s retail stores and look at all the products that use glass in displays and notebook trackpads, not to mention both the front and back of the iPhone 4.

However, the glass on the iPhone 4 may be causing more annoyance to the company than originally perceived. What I am talking about is that some slip-on cases, the kind that cover both the front and back of the iPhone 4, have been the cause of some serious cosmetic damages to the backside of the phone.

It appears that dirt and other debris can get in between the phone and the case which, over a period of time, can cause the back of the phone to shatter.

This problem has become so widespread that Apple’s engineers have been working overtime in an attempt to “quietly lock down” the problem. Apple has been testing various third-party cases to get a feel of the extent of the problem and to make sure this doesn’t happen to future versions of the phone.

This problem comes at a unique time for Apple considering the company no longer has their free iPhone 4 case program. This is also happening at the reported beginning of the mass production for a CDMA version of the iPhone which is said to be coming to Verizon in 2011. If Apple is planning on changing that version of the iPhone at all, then this back issue could very well be holding it back.

This isn’t the first crack problem that Apple has experienced. Both the Mac G4 Cube, which was introduced in 2000, and the iPhone 3G both experienced reports that the outsides of the devices were developing hairline surface cracks. Similar problems had been reported on the white versions of the MacBook notebooks which Apple acknowledged and began fixing last year.

No company likes problems, especially Apple. And these problems for the iPhone 4 couldn’t be coming at a worse time for the device, especially considering the fact that it may be heading to Verizon in 2011. If Apple wants to keep on top in the Smartphone game, then they had better fix these problems, and fast.

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