Apple is planning to launch a new version of the iPhone which will work almost anywhere in the world, according to American technology experts.

The "worldwide" version of the iPhone will be sold first in the US market next summer by Verizon Wireless, in which Vodafone has a 45% stake, according to Ashok Kumar, analyst at Northeast Securities.

The new phone will use a microchip developed by Qualcomm that can use both the 3G networks which predominate in Europe and Africa as well as the CDMA2000 network used by Verizon in the US and other networks across the world.

"This Qualcomm-powered world phone will facilitate Apple to be carrier-agnostic," Kumar said, meaning it would be able to further expand its list of mobile network partners.

Kumar's prediction follows a recent report by industry analysts OTR Global which quoted sources in the Taiwan handset supply chain as saying they had been contracted to supply a "hybrid" iPhone by the third quarter of 2010.

When Apple initially launched the iPhone in 2007 it did so under exclusive deals with network partners in the US, UK, France and Germany. Since then, however, it has abandoned this strategy in order to sell iPhones through many more mobile phone networks across the world.

Earlier this week, Orange started selling the iPhone in the UK, ending O2's two-year long exclusive deal. Orange reckons that it had sold over 30,000 by 4pm on the first day of sales, while Carphone Warehouse believes it will sell a 1m iPhones by Christmas.

The success of the iPhone has made Apple the world's most profitable smartphone manufacturer, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, overtaking the world's largest handset producer, Nokia.

The research firm has examined the smartphone market for the three months to the end of September – in which 43m phones that can access the web, send emails and download applications were sold – and reckons that Apple surpassed Nokia for the first time ever.

"We estimate Apple's operating profit for its iPhone handset division stood at $1.6bn in the third quarter of 2009," said Alex Spektor, analyst at Strategy Analytics. "Apple overtook Nokia for the first time, which recorded a lower $1.1bn of operating profit. With strong volumes, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls, the PC vendor has successfully broken into the mobile phone market in just two years."

Nokia has struggled to produce a lucrative rival to the iPhone. The Apple device has also spawned a host of touchscreen devices from other handset manufacturers including HTC, Samsung and Motorola, all of which have eaten into Nokia's share of a smartphone market it once dominated. Last month, Nokia announced its first quarterly loss for more than a decade.

The slew of touchscreen phones that have hit the shops have helped the smartphone market outperform the rest of the mobile phone industry, where sales have been in decline. But Nokia does not seem able to capitalise on the fact that consumers want high-end devices and its share of the smartphone market is slipping.

Last month, Nokia said it reckoned the entire mobile phone industry shipped 288m units in the quarter, down 7% on the same period a year ago, but up 7% on the second quarter. Nokia, however, shipped 108.5m units in the third quarter, which is down 8% on the same period last year and only up 5% on the previous quarter.

Nokia stripped out smartphone sales from the overall figures, estimating that 47m "converged mobile devices" were shipped in the three months, compared with an estimated 44.2m units in the third quarter of 2008 and 41m units in the second quarter of 2009. Of that total figure, Nokia sold 16.4m units in the third quarter of 2009; that is down from 16.9m in the second quarter of 2009 but admittedly a better performance than the 15.5m it shipped in the third quarter of the previous year.

Just a week after the results were announced, Nokia took the dramatic step of launching a legal attack on Apple in the US courts, alleging the iPhone infringes 10 of its patents in a dispute that could drag on for years.