Need proof that iPhone exclusivity in the U.S. is about to go the way of the dodo?  Look no further than second place U.S. wireless carrier AT&T's U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing which assures investors that sales will continue strong even "as these exclusivity arrangements end."  To help remove any ambiguity of what it might be talking about, the report goes on to state, "We believe offering a wide variety of handsets reduces dependence on any single handset."

Apple appears on the verge of finally embracing multiple carriers within the U.S., adopting the approach that, in part, allowed Android to surge ahead of it in the U.S. smartphone market.  

But to jump to the number one and number three carriers in the U.S., Verizon and Sprint, Apple must first produce a CDMA-capable iPhone (the current iPhone works on GSM, a rival technology). 

According to a June report from Digitimes, Apple has a CDMA iPhone 4 designed and tested.  What's more, reportedly the company is ditching troubled supplier Foxconn, instead awarding the CDMA iPhone 4 manufacturing contract to Taiwanese-owned rival Pegatron (to be fair, if this holds true, it may merely be because Foxconn does not currently have the additional capacity to handle the contract).

The phone reportedly will ship in Q4 2010 -- just in time for the holiday season.  Bloomberg also previously reported that a CDMA iPhone is on its way, jumping to Verizon and possibly Sprint.  Another report indicates that T-Mobile will officially pick up the iPhone, as well, which currently is only available to customers who jailbreak and unlock iPhones.

A jump to the rest of America's top carriers -- including the nation's largest carrier, Verizon -- could yield a massive surge in iPhone subscribers and big profits for Apple and its new wireless partners alike.  If Apple can get its antenna problems under control, that is.

Speaking of the iPhone hardware, it appears that Mark Papermaster has seen the last of his days in Cupertino.  The top executive, who came to Apple after a fierce legal battle with former employer IBM over his contract, has reportedly been canned.

The news was first reported by The New York Times.

Apple insider John Gruber, who runs the blog Daring Fireball, first suggests that Papermaster was released for the iPhone 4 antenna debacle, writing:

From what I’ve heard, it’s clear he was sacked. Papermaster was a conspicuous absence at the Antennagate press conference. Inside Apple, he’s “the guy responsible for the antenna” — that’s a quote from a source back on July 23.

But then seems to recant, posting the next day:

Does Apple have a “make one mistake and you’re fired” policy? No. But, if the mistake is big enough, sometimes yes. But I don’t even know whether the iPhone 4 antenna is the only thing that led to Papermaster’s sacking.
...It’s Mansfield, not Papermaster, who appears in Apple’s six-minute iPhone 4 promotional video — and that video was shot weeks (months?) before the iPhone 4 was unveiled....
But maybe Papermaster was already on the outs, and Mansfield was already overseeing the engineering of things like the Retina Display and the A4.
...
One last tidbit from an informed source: the bug on the “touching it wrong” signal loss issue was filed two years ago. This is not a problem they didn’t catch, or caught too late. So, on the one hand, clearly the fundamental antenna design predated Papermaster’s time at the company. But on the other hand, there was plenty of time to find a solution to the problem. I.e., it’s not that Apple should not have used an external antenna. It’s that it should have been even better.

Of numerous Apple-centric writers, Gruber has some of the best inside access to Apple, so if he doesn't know exactly why Papermaster is sacked, it's clear that just about no one does.  One thing's clear, though -- the iPad/iPhone/iPod hardware team is moving on and Papermaster isn't part of that process.