Interesting. Were
you at all curious to know how many of the
1.4m iPhones Apple's sold went to US T-Mobile customers and exporters "with the intention to unlock" the handsets? Well, there's no way anyone will ever know for sure, but on today's Apple Q4 earnings call Apple COO Tim Cook (or we think that was Tim Cook) stated that "Apple estimates 250,000 iPhones were sold with intention to unlock," and that "many of those sales happened after the price cut". Definitely not an insignificant number of iPhones not on Apple-authorized networks paying out serious coin for the privilege, so is it any wonder Cupertino's working so hard to lock this stuff down?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jiimayy @ Oct 22nd 2007 6:47PM
i thought sales to unlockers would benefit apple since they're selling more phones...wouldn't the profit from the ridiculously priced contract only benefit cingular/att? so why would apple want to crack down on hackers/3rd party developers?
Duey Cheatham & Howe @ Oct 22nd 2007 7:14PM
To help ensure that AT&T gets their share of revenue generated by the iPhone. The deal is supposed to work both ways. AT&T gets new customers and thus generates revenue by carrying the iPhone and Apple gets a cut of the revenue generated by the iPhone as well as whatever they make off of the handset. If Apple sold unlocked iPhones in the US that would be taking business away from AT&T in a sense as well as the additional money AT&T gives Apple from the service(s) used by the iPhone users.
hao @ Oct 22nd 2007 7:29PM
Apple gets a cut out of the data fee per month that ATT charges. Unlocked cannot have data so Apple don't get the cut.
lassi @ Oct 23rd 2007 7:52AM
during the two years of contract, even if just being unoptimistic for apples side, apple probably receives 300-500$ per sub, at least they should if iphone is subbed in the same range like other handsets.
250 000 x 400$=
100 000 000... so..
apple chose the business model of uber-lock-in and monthly payments.
Steve @ Oct 22nd 2007 11:37PM
Maybe they have a contract? Do you ask that everyone click on the ads? You would make so much more money... so why not??
nicole @ Oct 23rd 2007 3:05AM
Semi-related: has anyone heard why the iTunes activation server has been down since Sunday? No new iPhone activations have been processed for at least 48 hours if not longer... :-\
kyle @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:51AM
count me in for one of those unlocked iPhones! Commenting from one right now
zephead @ Oct 29th 2007 7:51PM
Wow. So Apple would've rather missed out on $100 million on iPhone sales rather than sell them to unlockers? And that $100 million isn't even counting the 4GB and 8GB iPhones originally sold at $500 and $600. They must be getting a hell of a lot of money from AT&T for activations. You could even call me an Apple "enthusiast", but this is really a BS move by Apple.