Over One Million iPhones Unlocked In US

[Detomah]

More than a quarter of iPhones sold in the US have been "unlocked" to work on network providers other than Apple's exclusive partner AT&T, a study says.
One million iPhones, or 27% of those sold last year, have been adapted to work on other networks, said Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

Apple recently admitted that the number of unlocked iPhones was "significant".

The iPhone, which was launched last summer, is tied to a single phone network in each country it is on sale.

While AT&T is Apple's chosen partner in the US, in the UK the iPhone is only officially available through O2, while in Germany it is tied to T-Mobile.

'Lost revenue'

Mr Sacconaghi said the high number of unlocked iPhones in the US would be a concern for Apple, as it receives a percentage of AT&T's contract fees from iPhone users.

He estimates that if Apple sells 10 million iPhones in the US by the end of 2008, but 30% of them have been unlocked to work with other phone networks, Apple will lose $500m (£251m) in revenues.

Apple and AT&T have declined to comment on the detail of the report.

Last month Vodafone failed in the German courts to get T-Mobile's exclusivity deal over the iPhone overturned.

BBC NEWS | Business | Quarter of US iPhones 'unlocked'

Note: Well that is what is going to happen if one company tries to monopolise things so much as these big players do.

[Seth]

Tbh, Apple would probably have made more money by not locking the phones to a specific network. A couple of my friends passed over the iPhone in favour of another phone purely 'cause O2 isn't the best network value wise.

[Harv]

The thing is Apple couldn't care less if this has happened as they have already stated that any updates made to iphones would include destroying the functionality of "unlocked" phones as the software would be specific to the companies they were using. Anyone who had illegally unlocked their phone would not be able to claim foul play by Apple by rendering there iphones blocks of plastic as it is stated in the contract that it is not allowed. Bit like console chipping now.

So it looks like millions of people with unlocked iphones are stuck with whatever bugs and limitations they have got and if they are unlucky enough to try and update they get a wedge of plastic for £200