It’s probably a matter of time before we see a true unlocked iPhone on the market. Hackers are working day and night to achieve this goal, and chances are they will succeed on a short or mid term period. DVD Jon has already been able to bypass the iTunes activation process and these hackers were able to unlock the iPhone and make it functional with any AT&T SIM card, freeing you and the iPhone from the two year contract.
But a successful attempt to completely unlock the iPhone from AT&T network could seriously hurt the relationship between AT&T and Apple. The very tight agreement signed by the two giants is based on the fact that customers must sign a two year contract with AT&T. If unlocking the iPhone becomes something easily done, AT&T and Apple executives will certainly not stay put, cross their arms and do nothing about it.
The iPhone lock is so important to AT&T and Apple’s relationship, that they must already have a B-plan in place to avoid losing the 2 year contract for too many new iPhone customers. And I don’t believe that they just crossed their fingers and said that "It won’t happen".
But what can be the back-up plan? What could be the secret weapon that Apple and AT&T have in their back pocket to stop the hackers? Here’s a possible scenario:
A great
aspect of the iPhone user experience is the ability to activate the
iPhone from the comfort of your home using only iTunes. But the back-up
plan could simply be to drop that and go back to standard store
contract signing and phone activation. This way, they would secure the
contract and avoid the iPhone being used on Sprint or (as Tom pointed out, Sprint is a CDMA network) T-mobile. Yes,
the iPhone will still be unlockable, but at least, Apple and AT&T
won’t lose any money because of this. At least on the short term
period.
We
can argue that the unlocked phone market is a marginal industry and
that even if the iPhone is finally unlocked, this hack would not be
used by the regular guy on the street. But this might be different with
the iPhone – mainly for two reasons. First of all, people want an
iPhone badly and they’re ready to do anything to reduce the operation
costs. Secondly, and this is even more important, AT&T’s five year
iPhone exclusivity, will push people to hack the phone in order to use
it on T-Mobile. Sure, by using the iPhone on another network
they will lose features like Visual Voice mail, but that won’t be a
show stopper for many people.
A
positive note for Apple, an easily unlockable iPhone will boost the
iPhone sales even more. But AT&T would certainly not let Apple get
away so easily with this one…
What
do you think about this? Do you agree? Do you think Apple will just let
that happen because it will remain a marginal market?
July 20th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
I don’t think Apple would “go back” on the self-activation process. The iPhone is sold in both AT&T and Apple stores. If they did this, they would have to train thousands of employees on the fly to learn how to activate phones. And Apple is all about seamless integration. This would cause much frenzy which Apple, because of the way they run their retail segment, would wish to avoid. The theory certainly could/would work, but I don’t forsee it happening.
Unlocking phones is common practice to us tech-geeks, but most American consumers have no idea what it is. I think that most people that want the iPhone are either going to switch to AT&T and pay the cancellation fee from their current provider, or they’re not going to buy it at all. Most consumer’s mindset is that it’s for AT&T and AT&T only and there’s no changing that.
When there is a solution to unlock the iPhone, most likely it will not significantly threaten the bond between AT&T.
July 20th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
This can NEVER be used with Sprint. Sprint, like Verizon is CDMA, a completely different technology.
July 20th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
The agreement with AT&T is interesting but unlocked iPhones would appeal to a much larger market that the US. There’s the rest of the world that is so desperate for an iPhone that the HTC Touch, Nokia N95 and a bunch of knock-offs are now enjoying a sales boost for folks that are desperate for anything that looks remotely like the iPhone.
The unlocked iPhone would become a global product in no time.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
I am surprised that Apple sold these phones locked into a network in the first place. They would sell a lot more phones if there were no contract and only sell them through apple authorised retailers, or basically anywhere you can buy an iPod. So you basically had to get a sim card from some other network, but it could just be placed in and work straight up. Don’t understand their thinking in this regard. I for one have to wait until they bring the phone downunder. Maybe January, 2008?