In spite of the buzz that most consumers stay away from buying an iPhone because of its Apple’s exclusive tie-up for the phone’s rights with AT&T, the company itself is least affected by such news, and has reposed confidence in its US partner.

Talking highly of AT&T at Apple’s second-fiscal quarter conference call, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook said: "We believe they're the best wireless provider in the US. They put the full force and weight of their company behind iPhone. We're very happy with the relationship we have and do not have a plan to change it."

COOK said that AT&T’s GSM foundation gels perfectly with Apple’s ultimate aim of providing ‘one phone for the entire world.’ Cook added that it is largely due to the carrier’s support for GSM - the globally-used mobile networking standard - that Apple could launch and sell one unit worldwide.

In the opinion of Apple, though a lot of phone makers sell handsets version for both GSM/UMTS globally, and the Sprint and Verizon operated CDMA mobile network technology, the development effort for such an offering is more than two times the effort Apple is putting in! Moreover, it is not much viable to take on the extra effort since CDMA providers intend changing over to the next generation of mobile networks.