An unlocked, third-party software capable handset is always going to be desirable, but exactly how many buyers obtained an iPhone with the express intent of ditching AT&T? Apple is putting that figure at around 18-percent of the total handsets sold.
“We don’t know precisely how many people are doing that [unlocking iPhones], our current guess is there is probably 250,000 of the 1.4 million that we sold where people had bought them with the intention of doing that. Many of those happened after the price cut” Timothy Cook, Chief Operating Officer, Apple
So far, there’s no way for Apple to monitor how many iPhones have been released from their carrier shackles – just as there’s no way for the teams behind the unlock solutions to work out how many of those who downloaded the software actually used it on their handsets – but revenue from AT&T should give the company some indication of the number of rogue cellphones. iTWire punched some figures into their cost calculator and estimates Apple could be missing out on $1.5 million each month:
“The cheapest plan is $59.99 per month, and according to various reports Apple gets somewhere between five and 15 percent – perhaps as much as 20 percent – of this. Let’s take 10 percent, which is $6 per month. If Cook’s number is anything like accurate, Apple’s already missing out on $US1.5 million a month, and that number will increase as more iPhones are sold” iTWire
Despite the air of vitriol that developed around it, Apple’s last firmware upgrade – which could brick some unlocked handsets – was, if you believe the PR, only accidentally damaging. Should Cupertino decide they want more of that $18 million a year that they’re missing out on, it’s not outside the realms of possibility that they could push out a more draconian update that would further increase the difficulty in unlocking future iPhones or re-unlocking existing handsets. After all, you can bet the Apple engineers are watching just as intently the developments of the iPhone Dev Team and their hacker cohorts, tweaking away at the official code in response.
If Apple were smart – they would cause updates to force an account with AT&T rather than “brick” unlocked phones. An owner with a phone that’s bricked will simply wait (out of necessity) for a new unlock – if a phone is re-set with the only option being to set-up an account with AT&T I think they will get even more subscribers and little/no bad PR
One could look at it the other way – if the estimated 250,000 people could not potentially unlock, they would have not bought. Figure the profit off of that many extra phone sales courtesy of the unlock!