Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ting-I Tsai writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Apple plans to begin mass producing the new iPhone by the end of the year, and it would be released in the first quarter of 2011, these people said. The phone would resemble the iPhone 4 currently sold by AT&T, but would be based on an alternative wireless technology used by Verizon, these people said.

There have been rumors of a Verizon-ready iPhone before but this is the first sign that Apple and Verizon have actually come to an agreement.

Not only does this confirmation have a lot of weight because of it’s publisher but it was also partially written by Yukari Kane, the person that I suspect to be Apple’s go-to writer for controlled leaks. She was the writer that got the scoop about Steve Jobs focusing on the tablet last year and she was also one of the writers that broke news about Steve Jobs’ liver transplant.

But it’s not just the Wall Street Journal writing about the Verizon iPhone, the New York Times has also confirmed that Apple will be releasing a Verizon iPhone early next year.