Comments on: Unlocked iPhones: What is Apple’s Secret Weapon?

By: Jamie

Jamie — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:54:36 +0000

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?

By: Anthony Caruana

Anthony Caruana — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:54:47 +0000

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.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:23:02 +0000

This can NEVER be used with Sprint. Sprint, like Verizon is CDMA, a completely different technology.

By: Roy Lichter

Roy Lichter — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:38:23 +0000

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.