At least three stories in recent days, all citing unnamed sources, gave three different scenarios of what Verizon may be up to. One from USA Today said that Verizon is discussing with Apple Inc. the possibility of that would work over Verizon's CDMA wireless network, as opposed to AT&T's GSM network. Analysts have said Verizon might want to work with a future variant of CDMA called WCDMA and Verizon's coming, faster, LTE network.

A second story from BusinessWeek said Verizon is working with Apple on two , one an "iPhone lite" calling device, and the other a media pad with access to music, video and phone calls over Wi-F. One of the two might appear this summer from Verizon, the story said.

Meanwhile, a third story, from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, said Verizon is working with Microsoft Corp. on a that has multimedia capabilities to compete against the iPhone.

Verizon won't comment on any of these reports, with a spokeswoman saying flatly after the third story appeared, "we don't comment on speculation and rumor."

Apple would not respond at all.