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The wires are buzzing with reported leaks of a joint development between Nokia and Verizon Wireless, for a touchscreen handset to run on the latter's planned LTE network. Details are scarce, probably because the reports do not refer to a specific project but a range of activities taking place between the two companies and their mutual partner Qualcomm.

When Nokia and Qualcomm announced last month that they had set aside their long running differences and agreed to work together, their initial deal was focused on the north American market, where Nokia has weak, and declining, market share. Although Nokia will buy some HSPA chips, for phones that would have to be targeted at the GSM carriers - mainly AT&T and T-Mobile - the clear prize was Verizon's LTE deployment. This would take Nokia into a carrier that has previously been closed to it, because it uses CDMA, and that plans to roll out the first LTE network in the world, with at least one market even going live this year (admittedly for fixed access rather than handset applications). Qualcomm has a famously high level of influence over Verizon, its long standing premier customer.

So it is hardly surprising that the partners are working on prototypes already, given that the design cycle for an advanced handset for a new network would generally be well over a year, especially when using semi-developed standards and silicon. When Verizon does get to the stage of moving beyond wireless DSL and laptop access and launching handsets - which we would expect to be in 2011, given the complexities and the need for coverage - it will need to avoid the main problem 3G pioneers faced, unattractive phones.

The carrier is mandated to support open access in its 700MHz spectrum, where it will run LTE, so this will eventually mitigate against exclusives. However, as long as Verizon's is the only LTE network available, LTE phone users will effectively be tied to its system, so any Nokia handset will be, by its nature, an exclusive. Similarly, Nokia will be keen to establish an early position in LTE devices, and Verizon will be the main opportunity.

Nokia has been far more open, in the past two years, to working on the heavily carrier-specified products that US cellcos demand, and has set up design teams with AT&T (with a couple of carrier customized phones already on the market) and Verizon Wireless, as it seeks to improve its dire US position. However, reports in The Street.com are probably over-egging the pudding in suggesting some kind of unique, exclusive alliance between Nokia and its would-be US customer. "It is well documented and publicly known that Verizon intends to deploy an LTE network throughout the USA during the next five years and that Nokia has certainly endorsed their decision," said an official company email statement. "While we have not entered into any exclusive 4G touchscreen device development as is being reported, we will continue to follow and pursue developments as a normal course of business."

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