After the U.S (with Verizon) and South Korea, Apple is likely to target China, India and Japan
The iPhone built around the CDMA protocol that Apple (AAPL) launched in February went first to Verizon (VZ).
That made sense, since Verizon Wireless, with 94 million customers, represents the world largest market for CDMA mobile phones.
But as J.P. Morgan’s Mark Moskowitz points out in a note to clients issued Tuesday, Verizon’s is not the only CDMA network. More than 560 million of the world’s 5.3 billion mobile phones carry CDMA (as opposed to GSM) chips. Of the 1.4 billion handsets sold last year, nearly one out of six were CDMA, and in the handy spreadsheet posted above, Moskowitz tells us where they are.
Apple has already started to go after these overseas markets. On March 16, it launched the iPhone in South Korea, where nearly three out of four handsets are CDMA mobile phones. Next in line, according to Moskowitz: China, India and Japan.
By 2012, he estimates, CDMA sales could add $9 billion to Apple’s bottom line, $6 billion from Verizon and $3 billion from overseas.
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[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
