Xephyer

First - for those of you wondering where I've been - i was traveling for work and had various appointments and other running around to do - so sorry for leaving everyone hanging for a bit.

Apparently Verizon and Apple are now in high-level discussions to bring two apple products to Verizon.

Now, we all know that AT&T has an exclusive agreement with Apple for the iPhone - but BusinessWeek reports that Apple and Verizon are in talks about selling two new wireless devices.

According to BusinessWeek, the devices are a less-expensive "iPhone lite" and a bigger "media pad" that "would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos" as well as offering wi-fi calling. This sounds a lot like the tablet that Apple is supposedly developing. (see my post on Apple Web Tablet from early March ).

This seems like a solid strategy. First, you don't want to cut your share of the AT&T crowd, but by opening up new devices to verizon, you have just also brought on board another huge market. One question is what an "iPhone lite" would be? It would have to be less expensive than the $199 price point, and would really need to be able to work with the iPhone App Store, as well as have GPS features. Apple has repeatedly said it has no interest in selling cheap phones, so it seems likely it won't be too lame.

The bigger news, at least to me, is the "media pad". Now BusinessWeek describes it as "smaller than an Amazon Kindle electronic reader, but its touchscreen is bigger than the Kindle's," citing someone who's seen it. Maybe Apple is planning more than one media pad - as rumors were previously that it was going with a 10" screen.

The other question is Apple making these devices to work with Verizon's 3G network - or wait for another year or so for the roll-out of the Verizon 4G network - which is reportedly going to be the standard. Guess we'll have to wait and see.