Apple Inc. said its CDMA iPhone 4 will be available for pre-orders from Thursday at Apple stores and Verizon Wireless. Apple said orders will be fulfilled on a first come, first served basis due to strong demand.

iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model with a new two year agreement. Verizon Wireless is already selling Apple's iPad in its stores.

Starting February 9, all qualified customers will be able to order an iPhone 4 on Verizon through Apple stores for delivery or reserve for in-store pick up beginning February 10.

Beginning February 10, iPhone 4 on Verizon will be available to all qualified customers at Apple’s retail stores. iPhone 4 will also be available at more than 2,000 Verizon Wireless Communication Stores nationwide.

iPhone, whose development began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' direction that Apple engineers investigate touchscreens, was created at an estimated development cost of $150 million over thirty months during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with AT&T Mobility-Cingular Wireless.

iPhone was introduced by Jobs on January 9, 2007 at Macworld 2007, after Cingular gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house. The first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007.

There are four generations of iPhone models, and they were accompanied by four major releases of iOS operating system. In June 2010, Apple released the iPhone 4, which has two cameras for FaceTime video calling and a higher-resolution display.

For the quarter ended Dec .25, Apple sold 16.24 million iPhones, representing an increase of 86 percent from last year.

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